96-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Fronts a Death Metal Band

As we get old­er, fam­i­ly and friends may pass away or leave us some­how, but for many of us cre­ativ­i­ty can be our solace. (Yes, it could also make us immor­tal, like Bach or Shake­speare, but we won’t be around to find out.) In the case of nona­ge­nar­i­an Inge Gins­berg that has been the case in the unlike­li­est of out­lets: death met­al.

This charm­ing New York Times doc­u­men­tary by Leah Galant details the unlike­ly team-up between Ginsberg–who spends her time between Switzer­land and New York City–and the young musi­cians who became her friends and got her into per­form­ing her poems live with full death met­al accom­pa­ni­ment.

Half earnest and half good-natured stunt, the cen­ter of it all is Ginsberg’s poems, which she has been writ­ing for years, and only a tiny glimpse of which we get to hear. The poems take on heavy sub­jects of mor­tal­i­ty, our destruc­tion of the earth, lone­li­ness. At one point Gins­berg was writ­ing these with no audi­ence, and, as she says in the doc, soci­ety is not inter­est­ed in hear­ing from the elder­ly (espe­cial­ly when it’s this dark.) It took her younger friends to make the con­nec­tion between her poems and the usu­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of death met­al and insist Gins­berg per­form them in that hec­tor­ing, doom laden-style of the genre. She was game.

Galant’s mini doc rewinds his­to­ry halfway through to explain Ginsberg’s upbring­ing: a “Jew­ish princess” who sur­vived the Holo­caust, fled to Amer­i­ca, and wound up writ­ing songs with her hus­band (Dean Martin’s “Try Me” was one of their hits). Tired of the war, they moved back to Zurich, and, well, fast for­ward three hus­bands and sev­er­al decades lat­er, Gins­berg was back in the spot­light, per­form­ing on the Swiss ver­sion of America’s Got Tal­ent.

We won’t spoil the end­ing of the doc, as the band try to get Gins­berg to try out for the actu­al America’s Got Tal­ent, because we’ve already said enough. But we’ll leave you with this quote from the singer her­self: “My con­cept of heav­en and hell is that in the moment of death you real­ize your life was full and good–that is heav­en. And if you think, ‘Oh, I should have done this or that,’ I think that’s hell.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Bat­tle-Scarred Heavy Met­al Musi­cians Play Rock ‘n’ Roll Clas­sics on Hel­lo Kit­ty Instru­ments

John Cage’s Silent, Avant-Garde Piece 4’33” Gets Cov­ered by a Death Met­al Band

The Physics of Play­ing a Gui­tar Visu­al­ized: Metallica’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” Viewed from Inside the Gui­tar

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.


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Comments (5)
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  • Mike says:

    Sor­ry but that is not death met­al. Do research and learn what death met­al real­ly sounds like. You’re a ter­ri­ble jour­nal­ist.

  • Ari says:

    Wow @Mike, you don’t care about any of the con­tent of the videos or any­thing about this wom­an’s amaz­ing sto­ry… just your pre­ten­sion around music? Lame!

    I love this woman. What an inspi­ra­tion. She’s STILL a Jew­ish princess!

    As a long time met­al fan, I don’t care what you cat­e­go­rize this, it’s the most met­al shit I’ve ever seen.

  • Karin says:

    Sor­ry but this is a stu­pid com­ment. You’re a ter­ri­ble com­menter.

  • Stannous Flouride says:

    Want­i­ng to hear the song they wrote for Dino I went look­ing but found out that Dean Mar­tin had a hit with ‘Try Again’, not ‘Try me’. (The only song with that title is Ten­nessee Ernie Ford’s ‘Try Me One More Time’)
    Here are the lyrics:
    If at first she says no try again
    If you meet with defeat try again
    Don’t for­get at the start she won’t part with her heart
    Til you prove that it won’t be in vain

    So don’t cry and don’t sigh try again
    Though the odds are one hun­dred to ten
    Think how great the suc­cess when her answer is yes
    And that’s why you must try again

    Don’t for­get at the start she won’t part with her heart
    Til you prove that it won’t be in vain
    So don’t cry and don’t sigh try again
    Though the odds are one hun­dred to ten
    Think how great the suc­cess when her answer is yes
    And that’s why you must try again

    Here’s the music video:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=yNL-I58bSgU

  • Michael Santomauro says:

    just when you thought that every wrin­kle in the Holo­caust saga had been exhaust­ed some­thing like this comes along…it’s like those old Franken­stein movies…the mon­ster nev­er dies..

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