Lesson Plan 6:
The Jewish Deathsong
In this lesson, students will watch a clip of a singer performing the Jewish Deathsong, composed by Martin Rosenberg (aka Rosebery d’Arguto) in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in late 1942. The song, set to the melody of the traditional Yiddish folk tune, Tsen Brider (“Ten Brothers”), reflects on the deaths of ten brothers in gas chambers. Composing these lyrics was a poignant form of testimony and resistance inside a concentration camp.
Grades: 8-12
This lesson plan is designed for teachers and students working at an introductory level. If your students are just beginning their study of the Holocaust, we suggest taking a look at the following pre-teaching resources:
Holocaust Encyclopedia from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)
Yad Vashem Teaching Materials
Starting in October 2025, you will be able to stream the full-length documentary, The Last Musician of Auschwitz, for free via BBC Select to prepare your classes.
The Jewish Deathsong was written in Yiddish. If you want to learn more about this Jewish language, we suggest the following resources:
To learn background about the Jewish Deathsong or its composer, you can read this article on the teaching platform “Music and the Holocaust” by ORT.
For definitions of Holocaust terms, you can visit the USHMM Glossary or the Museum of Jewish Heritage Curriculum Glossary. All the specific terms mentioned in this lesson plan are also explained at the end.
You can also explore further resources about the Holocaust and Antisemitism on the Center for Jewish History website.
Rosebery d'Arguto (Martin Rosenberg) wrote the Jewish Deathsong to the melody of the Yiddish folk song Tsen brider zaynen mir gevezn (Ten Brothers We Used to Be). Tsen Brider was written in Yiddish by an unknown composer at the end of the 19th century. To read the lyrics of the original song, click here.
The original version of the song tells the story of ten merchant brothers who die of starvation, counting down until only one is left. In the concentration camp version, all ten brothers are killed in gas chambers.
After Rosenberg was killed by the Nazis and after the end of World War Two, the song was made public by fellow prisoner, Aleksander Kulisiewicz, who made it his lifelong mission to educate people about Rosenberg and music in the camps.
Rosebery d'Arguto (Martin Rosenberg) wrote the Jewish Deathsong in German, so its original name is Jüdischer Todessang. In the documentary, the song is performed in Yiddish by the Canadian folk artist, Ben Caplan.
Yiddish is a language that Jewish people in (Eastern) Europe have been speaking for many centuries. It grew from German but includes many words from Hebrew, Slavic languages, and other local languages. People write Yiddish using the Hebrew alphabet and read it from right to left. With the immigration of many Jewish families to America, Yiddish made its way into English. In New York City, Yiddish changed how people talked and added words like schlep, kvetch, and mensch to everyday English. Learning about Yiddish helps students understand immigrant life, family stories, and how languages mix.
Introduce your students to some basic information about the persecution of Jews and the Nazi camp system. If your students are new to studying the Holocaust, you can provide additional historical context by sharing some information from the USHMM’s Introduction to the Holocaust.
Quick-Write Prompt: Give students 3 minutes to jot down what comes to mind when they hear the title Jewish Deathsong.
Prepare your students by setting the context. They are going to watch a clip of an artist singing the Jewish Deathsong. Explain to them that the song is in Yiddish and that it talks about the murders of Jews during the Holocaust.
Please be advised that there are two versions of the clip.
The longer clip shows the full performance of the Jewish Deathsong, but also includes historical footage that might be disturbing to some students: bones and ashes from people killed in concentration camps by the Nazis.
The shorter clip includes only parts of the song and omits the historical footage.
Please make a decision which clip to show to your students based on your evaluation of what is appropriate for each particular group of students. If you plan to show the longer clip, prepare students for what they will see, and tell them to let you know if they need a brief pause or a moment of reflection.
Show the longer clip
Show the shortened clip
Class discussion:
After showing the clip, give students background about the origins of the song. You can show them a photo of Rosebery d'Arguto (Martin Rosenberg) and explain his biography.
Then hand out a worksheet with the lyrics of the song or project it for the whole class.
On the worksheet, you will see the Yiddish version as well as the translated English version. If you have time, you can explain some background about the Yiddish language at this point.
Have one or several students read the English stanzas out loud. Then ask if there are any questions.
Here is some additional background about the lyrics if questions arise:
We were ten brothers, we were left with nine. |
In the original folk version, the ten brothers were merchants. In every stanza they traded different goods. |
Yidl with the fiddle, |
Yidl means young Jew. Moyshe is a common Yiddish name deriving from Moses. |
Sing a little song for me, |
Gas is a play on words, because it refers to the word gas and alludes to gas chambers, but also references the Yiddish word Gas, which means street. In the original folk version, there is a line about singing in the middle of the street (Oyfn mitn gas). |
I am the only brother left, |
Mourning in Judaism is usually a group experience, with the whole family coming together to grieve and pray in a seven-day ritual called shiva. |
The others have been murdered. |
While the first stanza of the song just speaks about a brother dying, in the song it becomes clear that all the brothers were killed (by the Nazis). |
Yidl with the fiddle, |
This is foreshadowing the singer’s own death. Saying it will be his last song because he will also be killed. |
We were ten brothers, |
The last stanza asks listeners to reflect on the larger issue: the atrocity of the persecution and murder of innocent people by the Nazis. |
Now pair students into pairs or groups to have them discuss the following questions (also printed on the worksheet):
Within Nazi Germany, and especially within concentration camps, it was extremely dangerous to talk, write or sing about the Nazi crimes happening. If Rosenberg or any of the choir members had been caught singing the song within the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, they would have faced immediate execution.
The fact that a song written in 1942 talks about “going into the gas” shows what was known already at the time about the mass atrocities – at least within concentration camps.
Have each pair/group present their answers. Write down main themes on the blackboard.
If your students are interested in learning more about Yiddish, show them some of the resources mentioned at the beginning of this lesson plan.
If your students are interested in learning more about Martin Rosenberg, you can assign them to read this biography.
Or you can have them browse the teaching platform Music and the Holocaust by ORT.
Auschwitz – complex of three Nazi camps established between 1940 and 1942. Originally a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners, it grew into the largest site of mass murder in the Holocaust.
Concentration Camp – place where large groups of people, often political prisoners or minorities, were imprisoned without trial, usually under harsh conditions. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites (including ghettos).
Death Camp – see Killing Center
Deportation – forced removal and transportation of populations (primarily Jews and also Roma and political opponents) by the Nazis to ghettos, concentration camps, or killing centers, often in overcrowded freight or cattle cars under brutal conditions.
Gas chambers – specially constructed rooms in the Nazi Killing Centers (or death camps) designed to carry out the murder of European Jewry.
Gestapo – secret police of Nazi Germany, known for spying on people, suppressing opposition, and using fear and violence to control the population.
Holocaust - a word of Greek origin meaning complete destruction, especially by fire. The word is used to describe the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.
Killing Center – specialized Nazi camps designed solely for mass killing during the Holocaust. Victims, mainly Jews, were transported to camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, where they were murdered, often in gas chambers.
Nazi – a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party that took political control of Germany under Adolf Hitler in 1933, after gaining mass popular support. The Nazi Party was violently antisemitic. In addition to Jews, Nazi persecution was directed toward Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political enemies of the Nazi Party.
Sachsenhausen concentration camp – established in 1936 as the main concentration camp for the Berlin area.
Worker’s choir – singing group made up of working-class people, often performing songs about labor, solidarity, and social justice.
Yiddish – a language made from German and Hebrew that many Jewish people spoke in (Eastern) Europe and that influenced how people talk in the US, especially in New York.