Leo Geyer, a British musician and Oxford University doctoral candidate, has spent eight years studying the music written and played at Auschwitz. The orchestras, made up of inmates, were ordered to play marching tunes at camp events. Geyer’s discoveries comprise 210 fragments, some complete scores.

Geyer came upon the forgotten manuscripts by chance in 2015 when he first visited Auschwitz while working on a commemorative piece of music to honor the late Sir Martin Gilbert, the author of a history of the Holocaust. At the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, an archivist mentioned some fragments of musical scores that had been left there. Since then, Geyer has visited many times to put the fragments together. Pictured, trumpeter Jakub Imielski plays one of the pieces at the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on Jan. 27 in Oswiecim, Poland.                                      Windfall Films photo