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Elton John to Headline Life Festival Oświęcim, Near Auschwitz

‘We’ll be celebrating life, peace, and music’

by
Jonathan Zalman
December 07, 2015
Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
Elton John performing in Hong Kong, November 24, 2015. Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images
Elton John performing in Hong Kong, November 24, 2015. Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

The Rocket Man is coming to Poland next summer.

On Sunday, Life Festival Oświęcim, a festival promoting “peaceful relations beyond cultural and state borders” and all that good stuff, announced that living legend Elton John is slated to headline the 3-day music event. Last year, Eric Clapton played on the final day of the festival, which is in the town of Oświęcim, the location of Auschwitz. In her dispatch from the 2014 show, Tablet contributor Ruth Ellen Gruber wrote:

The festival was the brainchild of Darek Maciborek, a well-known radio DJ who was born and still lives in Oświęcim. It’s one of the latest steps in [the town’s] ongoing struggle to redefine its role as a real, living city—and not just an appendage of the death camp where the Nazis murdered at least 1.5 million people, most of them Jews.

A month prior to his Poland show, John will perform in Israel, in Tel Aviv, reported The Times of Israel.

“Like everyone, I am shocked by the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere,” John said. “In June, in Oświęcim, we’ll be celebrating life, peace, and music.”

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.