DEPENDS ON THE GROUND?:

An Auschwitz Survivor and Her New Rap Band: Esther Bejarano, one of the last surviving members of the Auschwitz women's orchestra, has made music her whole life. Now, she has joined forces with a hip hop band to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. (Charles Hawley, 1/26/10, Der Spiegel)

"It is certainly a bit different from what we normally do," the diminuitive, 85-year-old Bejarano told SPIEGEL ONLINE, referring to her group Coincidence, which includes her daughter Edna and son Joram and normally plays Jewish and anti-fascist songs. "But I know this hip hop stuff is popular among the youth. I thought if we worked together, then young people could learn more about what happened back then."

The album, called Per la Vita, includes a number of resistance standbys such as Desateur and Avanti Popolo. But it has been remixed to include rhymes created by Kutlu Yurtseven and Rossi Pennino of Microphone Mafia, a hip hop duo that has been around since releasing their debut album in 1994.

And it has achieved modest success, with a single from the CD currently number two on a chart designed to promote German-language pop music. The band is now on tour through Germany with several dates scheduled in February including one in Berlin on the 27th.

Mostly, though, the album has drawn exactly the kind of attention the artists were hoping for. The project originated as an answer to a neo-Nazi effort in 2004-2006 to distribute right-wing music on school grounds across Germany. The Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) called the Microphone Mafia in 2007 to ask if they would be willing to come up with a CD of their own -- rap versions of Jewish songs for teachers to give to their students.