Report: Ohio State Band's Off-the-Record Songbook Featured Songs Mocking Holocaust Victims

By D.J. Byrnes on July 30, 2015 at 11:20 am
Do not stand with Jon Waters.
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Jon Waters, the fired Ohio State band director, is in the midst of an up an uphill climb against Ohio State in his bid to be restored to his former position/get paid millions of dollars.

Today, another bombshell in that case went off.

From Sharon Terlep of The Wall Street Journal:

A book of parody songs updated in 2012 and circulated privately by members of the Ohio State University marching band included a sendup of the Holocaust with joking references to furnaces used in Nazi concentration camps and the train cars used to transport Jews to their deaths.

The Holocaust song, called “Goodbye Kramer,” whose lyrics haven't been previously disclosed, includes lines about Nazi soldiers “searching for people livin’ in their neighbor’s attic,” and a “small town Jew…who took the cattle train to you know where.” It was written to be sung to the tune of the 1981 Journey hit “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

[...]

The songbook, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, included an introduction that noted “Goodbye Kramer” as a new addition, along with a parody of the fight song of University of Nebraska, then a new member of the Big Ten conference. An introduction to the book said: “Some of these [songs] may be offensive to you. If so, you can either ignore them, or you can suck it up, act like you got a pair and have a good time singing them.”

Ohio State, in a statement to WSJ.com, said In a statement, said the songbook reflected the “shocking behavior” the school is “committed to eradicating from its marching band program.” 

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