Holocaust Symphony is a nine-movement orchestral work by Philip Lee Williams created as a memorial to those who suffered and died in the Holocaust. Following is a brief description of each camp, the movement composed in memory of it, and a link to play the music.

1. Ravensbruck. An estimated 30,000 to 40,000 women and children died in this women’s concentration camp in northern Germany. The majority of the women there had apparently come from Poland. After the end of the war, numerous Nazi doctors were tried and found guilty at the Nuremburg Trials for performing ghastly “experiments” on the women in the camp. Until 1943, the bodies of those killed at Ravensbruck were cremated at a camp in nearby Furstenberg, but in that year the SS built its own gas chamber and crematorium at the Ravensbruck site. When the camp was liberated by Russian troops on April 30, 1945, less than four thousand women, most of them sick and starving, remained in the camp, along with perhaps 300 male prisoners.

This movement lasts 21:58 | To download it, click here.

2. Sobibór. A quarter of a million people died in this camp, which was in Poland. The victims were mostly Jews and all died in gas chambers that used carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipes of military tanks, Jewish prisoners planned and carried out an uprising at this camp in October 1943. After this, the camp was closed. The final walk that condemned prisoners took on their way to the gas chambers was a barbed-wire-lines lane called Himmelstrasse—“Road to Heaven.”

This movement lasts 17:34 | To download it, click here.

3. Bergen-Belsen. When this camp in Saxony was liberated on April 15, 1945, British troops found a staggering 13,000 corpses lying unburied on the grounds, along with 60,000 sick and starving prisoners. An estimated 50,000 people died there between 1945 and 1945. The camp had no gas chambers but thousands died from disease, including, most famously, Anne Frank, who perished there only one month before the camp was liberated. Within one month of liberation another 9,000 of the prisoners died.

This movement lasts 20:11 | To download it, click here.

4. Dachau. Many Americans first became aware of the death camps through newsreels of the Dachau camp, in which an estimated 25,000 prisoners died. From the beginning of 1945 until liberation, about 15,000 people died of disease and malnutrition in conditions that were nightmarish and beyond almost anyone’s conception. When American troops reached the camp, they found 32,000 prisoners, most of them starving and very sick. Nearly one-third of the prisoners at Dachau were Jews.

This movement lasts 15:02. | To download it, click here.

5. Chelmno. Opened in 1941, the purpose of the Polish camp near the town of Chelmno was to exterminate Jews. More than 150,000 people died in the camp, and the killings there began the day after the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor and continued off and on until the camp was abandoned in January 1945 as Soviet troops approached the site. It was, according to Wikipedia, “the first camp to use poison gas which was stored in little pellets that were dropped in gas chambers.”

This movement lasts 16:38 | To download it, click here.

6. Treblinka. Located northeast of Warsaw, this camp was used to kill a staggering 750,000 prisoners from July 1942 until October 1943. The industrial extermination here was so vast that the stench of decomposition could be smelled miles away. New gas chambers built by September 1942 could kill 150 people an hour. Sometimes, after gassing, a few of the victims were not quite dead and guards shot them. All were cremated—up to a thousand bodies at a time—twenty-four hours a day. Some sources believe that more than 700,000 Jews had been killed at Treblinka by the end of 1942 and the final toll of all victims was well more than 1 million.

This movement lasts 12:40 | To download it, click here.

7. Buchenwald. This slave labor camp was located near Weimar in Germany and more than 50,000 human beings died in this location, primarily from sickness and hunger. It was also the site of ghastly experiments carried out by guards. Still, more than 8,000 prisoners were slain by shooting and a thousand by hanging. While Jews constituted a percentage of the prisoner population, there were also Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, gypsies, and even Allied POWs. Buchenwald is German for “beech forest.”

This movement lasts 15:18 | To download it, click here.

8. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Located in southern Poland, Auschwitz and its sister camp Birkenau constituted the evil heart of the Holocaust. Almost beyond comprehension, between 1 and 4 million people died at these camps. Ninety percent of them were Jews. Most of those murdered died in gas chambers from the effects of Zyklon B gas, but tens of thousands died from illness, starvation, and medical experiments, among other causes. There were, in all 40 satellite camps grouped under the Auschwitz name, including Auschwitz I, the original camp which became the administrative center; Auschwitz II or Birkenau, the main extermination camp; and Auschwitz III or Monowitz, which was a labor camp. The entrance to the camp was and is still is marked by the famous and heartbreaking motto “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or “Work makes one free.” The stories of all the concentration camps are grim and terrible, but it is impossible to consider what happened at Auschwitz and not be changed.

This movement, the heart of the Symphony, lasts 27:39. | To download it, click here.

9. Kaddish. From the Aramaic for “holy,” the Kaddish is an important part of the Jewish prayer service and sanctifies and magnifies God’s name. “Kaddish” is often used to refer to “The Mourner’s Kaddish,” which is said as part of the mourning rituals, funerals, and memorials in Judaism. In the context of Holocaust Symphony, Philip Lee Williams uses the term to name the work’s final movement an homage and memorial to those who died.

This movement lasts 10:40 | To download it, click here.