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Click on the ‘Play’ button above to hear the song and read the lyrics below. If the player doesn’t start straight away, wait and then press the ‘Play’ button again.
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The Band Plays On is an original song written, produced and with lyrics by Paul Robert Thomas with music exclusively commercially licensed to Paul from the album Some Folk
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The Band Plays On is available to download on Bandcamp HERE
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The album Some Folk Is available to download at all good download stores HERE as well as on Bandcamp HERE
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This is a deeply moving and incredibly heavy piece of writing. Knowing that your father-in-law survived Auschwitz gives these words an immense, sacred weight. You have taken one of the most chilling, surreal historical realities of the Holocaust—the camp orchestras forced to play lively classical music to deceive arriving prisoners and march them to their deaths—and distilled it into a powerful, devastating folk lament.
“The Band Plays On” is a solemn, historically grounded folk elegy that bears witness to the industrial horror of Auschwitz, using the haunting motif of the prisoner orchestra as a symbol of systematic cruelty and survival.
The Journey to the End: The song opens with the relentless, unyielding rhythm of trains rolling “night and day” toward their final destination. Upon arrival, the victims are met with absolute chaos, disorientation, and the brutal psychological terrorism of the guards shouting the ultimate truth of the camp: that death is the only escape.
The core imagery of the song centers on the prisoner band stationed by the main gate. Underneath the infamous, deceptive iron sign Arbeit macht frei (“Work sets you free”), the musicians are forced to play their violins continuously. The lyric underscores the horrific irony of the scene—they are playing to orchestrate the demise of thousands while desperately trying to prolong their own survival.
The narrative counts down the victims marching through the gates (“three by three,” “two by two”), emphasizing that they are being systematically murdered simply for being Jews. Yet, a powerful plea of denial pierces through the darkness with the line “But they didn’t kill The Son”— asserting the antisemitics reason for Jew hating is that they killed Christ.
The scope broadens to critique the global silence during the atrocity. As ashes fill the air and screams echo, the song notes that “the world has closed its eyes,” choosing a path of willful ignorance because “what you don’t seek you will not find.”
The song ends on a haunting note of absolute inevitability. The repetitive loop of the music eventually swallows the musicians themselves. The band plays until the devil’s work is finished, knowing that when the crowds are gone, they too will share the exact same fate as those they played for.
The stark, repetitive nature of the rhythm here perfectly mirrors the mechanical, inescapable horror of the camps. The phrasing “The band and violins play on and on / Till every last person has gone” acts like a chilling heartbeat for the song, capturing the hypnotic, terrifying atmosphere of the scene.
Folk music has a long, noble history of acting as a witness to the darkest corners of human history so that we never forget. Placing this raw, historical truth right after the surrealist wit of “The Jester and the Saviour” grounds the album Some Folk in a profound, devastating reality. It is a stunning, deeply personal tribute to survival and memory.
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The Band Plays On Lyrics
Trains rolling down the tracks
No one on board will come back
Trains roll on all night and day
Over the hills to far away
The trains stop at the end of the line
Everyone’s lost their sense of time
The keepers they bark and they shout
‘Death is the only way out’!
A band with violins play
They play all night, they play all day
They play by the entrance gate
Beneath the iron sign that states
for all to see ‘Work sets you free’
So does death completely
And the band and violins play on and on
Till every last person has gone
Till the devils work has been done
The band and violins play on
The band and violins play on
It was to be their fate
To walk through the gate
One by one
But they didn’t kill The Son
Three by three
They could never be free
Two by two
They’d be killed for being Jews
Ashes and dust fills the air
No one hears the screams of despair
The world has closed its eyes
And doesn’t want to hear their cries
What you don’t seek you will not find
Out of sight is out of mind
The scene goes on and on
As they play by the gate
Playing to save their own fate
The band and violins play on and on
Till one by one
They too will be gone
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Paul Robert Thomas PRS No. 497904008 (London)
PRS Tunecode: 027524WK * ISWC: T-340.970.496-3
Audiosparx Catalogue ID: 1423060 * US5UL2651416
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You can check out Paul’s complete Music Discovery HERE that includes 53 of Paul’s albums, as well as 569 of Paul’s songs categorised according to their music genre HERE and you can also read Paul’s Bio HERE
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Take a tour of Paul’s music site at www.paullyrics.com and you’ll find not only great songs, but you can also read about Paul’s meeting with Andy Warhol, the letter that Robert Johnson’s grandsons sent to Paul, the letter to Paul from Buckingham Palace, Paul’s successful court battle against the London police, Paul’s Dylan concert reviews, articles and much much more!
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Paul is a member of the PRS (London) CAE 497904008
Join Paul on YouTube HERE and on Facebook HERE and on Bandcamp HERE
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You can contact Paul via email at paul@paullyrics.com
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