Singled Out: Michael Rudd's Springtime in Auschwitz

New Mexico-based Americana/roots-rock singer-songwriter Michael Rudd just released his new album "Midnight at Dawn," and to celebrate we asked him to tell us about the song, "Springtime in Auschwitz." Here is the story:

A couple of years ago, my son, his longtime partner, and I took a train from Berlin to Warsaw and eventually down to Krakow and Auschwitz. We were the first Rudds or Ruddnitskys - at least those who I knew or knew about - to step foot in Poland since my grandfather left with his mother and brother for Elizabeth, New Jersey, more than a hundred years before to escape the Cossacks and a growing tide of antisemitism. To give some context, before WWII, Poland was home to over three million Jews. About three million were killed in the Holocaust, including at Auschwitz. Now, there are only about 25,000 remaining in the entire country.

At Auschwitz, we walked from the train station through the small, quiet town of Oswiecim into one part of the former death camp and took the required tour of the site - the bunks, the process, and the pictures - and then took a bus to the other part, which was even more desolate and lifeless. The crowds were immense wherever we went, and it was difficult to find the space to feel what I thought I should feel or to place thousands of people in my imagination in those buildings and those fields and beneath that sky.

Then, about a year later, "Springtime in Auschwitz" came out of nowhere, as if I was belatedly experiencing that visit. In my mind, I saw two young people at the camp, a boy and a girl, looking at each other from across the way. They saw each other only twice in their lives, and they never talked and they never learned each other's names. The boy survived into old age, still remembering her many decades later. The song is from his perspective.

Do natural human emotions switch off in the midst of terror and despair? Can two teenagers gaze at each other while smoke pours out of a crematorium? When you live in hell, how do you hold on to your humanity? Are you supposed to? Or can you? That's what this song considers: the possibility of the smallest sparks of love in the depths of horror and complete hopelessness.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here

Singled Out: Michael Rudd's The Train Is Coming

Singled Out: Michael Rudd's Going Away

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