Music at Auschwitz brings together the two books in which Simon Laks talks about his survival as a musician and conductor of the orchestra at Auschwitz II-Birkenau: the first, "Musics from another world", was written in French in collaboration with René Coudy, after the Laks returned to France, and it was originally published in 1948. The second was written in Polish thirty years later; it is "Auschwitz Melodies", which originally appeared in 1979. Although both books deal with the same theme, the character of "Otherworldly Music" is more descriptive, while in "Auschwitz Melodies" Laks reflects on the function of music in Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
For the first time in Spanish, both books are presented in a single volume, which makes the comparison an instructive reading. Also, with the aim of guiding the reader for that moment
of the twentieth century and for the life of the composer, include essays by the historian Annette Becker, the musicologist Frank Harders-Wuthenow and the son of Simon Laks, André.