Ghosts of Dachau

Album: Our Favourite Shop/Internationalists (1985)
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by The Style Council's lead singer Paul Weller, this track is about the basic human need for love, even in a place like a Nazi death camp. Weller was inspired by Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman, a book about experiences in concentration camps like Auschwitz and Dachau.

    The singer told Daniel Rachel (The Art of Noise: Conversations with Great Songwriters): "In amongst all this f--king degradation and disgraceful human behavior there were still people having love affairs. There's a bit in the book where he describes a guy who's lost his trousers. He's walking around semi-naked because there was nothing else to put on, all those kind of images. Whether it sounds right to say but life carried on, in a strange way, in those camps. I thought it was unbelievable, whether it was a strength or a stupidity of human behavior: whichever way you look at it I thought it was fascinating."

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