Hitler was fan of Russian and Jewish music

20 October, 2007, 05:31

Who could have thought that Adolf Hitler, the man synonomous with Jewish and Russian hatred, owned a collection of records by great musicians of both nations, which he himself had banned? But the daughter of a Russian World War Two veteran has revealed just that.

Rakhmaninov, Shalyapin, Shnabel, Stokowski – these are among some of the records belonging to the man who considered Slavs and Jews 'subhumans'.

Aleksandra Bezymensky's father, Lev, was charged with recording the contents of Hitler's underground shelters and German Imperial Chancellery after Berlin's capture by the Soviet Army in 1945. In his memoirs he described how he found the records in a wooden box bound for Hitler's residence in the Alps.

Bezymensky asked permission to take the records and took part of the collection back home to Moscow.

For many decades to come, the historian shared his find with his friends, many of whom were famous Russian musicians.

“I'm proud to say that, in a way, this collection helped in the making of the Soviet school of musicians. Because records by Western musicians were very rare in Moscow at that time,” says Aleksandra, Lev Bezymensky’s daughter.

Aleksandra hasn't yet decided what to do with the heritage. For her it's a memory of her father who died last June, but for him it was just a collection of good music.

Referring to it, he used to say: “Fuhrers come and go, but the music lives on”.