Ilse Weber

Ilse Weber (1903–1944) was a Czech Jewish poet, singer, and songwriter whose simple, haunting lullabies and songs gave voice to life in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Accompanying herself on guitar, she wrote around sixty works—nursery rhymes, laments, and songs of quiet resistance—that comforted the sick children she cared for and offered inmates moments of solace amid despair. Smuggled out or memorized by fellow prisoners, her music survived her deportation and murder in Auschwitz, carried forward by her husband and son. Today, pieces like Wiegala are sung worldwide, preserving her legacy as a testament to music’s power to console and to resist.