In
Lviv, which was seized at the end of June 1941, shortly after the
Lviv pogrom carried out at the beginning of July, the "Jewish Worker Camp", later known as the Janowska concentration camp, began to form under the leadership of the German administration by the
Ukrainian auxiliary police, formed from the (
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). The initiator of the compulsory organization of musician-prisoners in the orchestra was the deputy commandant of the Janowska camp, who before the war had "played the violin in a
jazz band in
Katowice." Rokita was one of many sadistic villains at the camp; "Choice sadists and various scum of the Nazi death machine were in the Janowska concentration camp. Many of these people suffered from pathological perversions...The most diverse ways of killing people were used in this camp. Each Nazi tried to outdo his colleagues by discovering his own special killing method." Among the orchestra musicians
Josef German, violinist
Leonid Stricks, and cellist
Leon Eber. During "
selections and actions," the orchestra performed a
tango "Todestango" [Tango of Death]...composed by Yakub Munt (sp?), former director of the Lviv opera. The literary director of Janowska and a member of the orchestra as an creative director was
Emanuel Schlechter. The music was not based on an Argentinian tango composed by [Eduardo Bianco] but on the Polish tango To ostatnia niedziela (The Last Sunday) one of the long-time hits composed in 1935 by the Jewish pianist and band leader
Jerzy Petersburski (1895-1979)]." Shortly before the
liberation of Lviv, all orchestra musicians were shot. According to Ukrainian survivor
Bohdan Kokh: "The most terrible day was the last one, when 25,000 Jews were shot...This operation ended with the last orchestra coming to the pit; they were undressed, they laid down their instruments; they went into the pit, but before that they played the 'Tango of Death' for themselves." Subsequently, a
sonderkommando was formed, which was engaged in concealing the
crimes of the Nazis. == References ==