me vet noch derlebn” (“To hell with them, we will survive them, we will yet survive”), conveying and sharing the feelings of the Jewish people through music. Laughter, which was a rarity in the Kraków ghetto, was another way numerous victims attempted to cope with their strong hatred for the enemy. Sometimes prisoners performed ghetto songs, while other times small groups performed them with various instruments. Street songs are a sub-genre of ghetto music with four dominant themes: hunger, corrupt administration, hope for freedom and a call for revolt. Music has always been a traditional and important aspect of both Jewish holidays and Jewish home life more generally. The prisoners in the Kraków Ghetto did their best to keep this tradition alive, especially during Passover and Yom Kippur. Although music brought some comfort to many, suicide rates were significantly higher among the musicians than other camp workers. Many of the musicians were forced to watch the murder of their families and friends due to the Nazi's insistence that the prisoner-musicians play music while the other prisoners were marched to the gas chambers. Aleksander Kulisiewicz was an aspiring musician who did his best to “collect, compose, and perform songs” while living in the ghetto even though it was illegal to do so. Inmates in the Kraków ghetto worked 12-hour days that left them more exhausted than imaginable. In order to pass the time, songs were sung throughout the work day. Mordechai Gebirtig, who is “known for his beautiful and prescient songs and poems” in Yiddish emerged from the Kraków ghetto. His song “Our Town Is Burning” which was written in 1938 became “one of the most popular songs in the ghettos and concentration camps." Unfortunately, Gebirtig was shot and killed in the Kraków ghetto. Another individual who was in the Kraków ghetto was Roman Polanski, who became a famous film director upon his survival of the Holocaust. Polanski eventually directed a film that told the story of the musician Władysław Szpilman who survived the Holocaust. In order to pass time while trapped in these horrendous conditions, a lot of Jewish children in the Kraków ghetto played the violin and any other instruments they had access to. Music proved to be an instrumental aspect of cultural life in the Kraków ghetto that aided in keeping the spirits of Jews up as much as possible during such low and awful times. Resistance Organized