Red Sector A:
All that we can do is just survive
All that we can do to help ourselves
Is stay alive...
Ragged lines of ragged grey
Skeletons, they shuffle away
Shouting guards and smoking guns
Will cut down the unlucky ones
I clutch the wire fence
Until my fingers bleed
A wound that will not heal-
A heart that cannot feel-
Hoping that the horror will recede
Hoping that tomorrow-We'll all be freed
Sickness to insanity
Prayer to profanity
Days and weeks and months go by
Don't feel the hunger-too weak to cry
I hear the sound of gunfire
At the prison gate
Are the liberators here-
Do I hope or do I fear?
For my father and my brother-it's too late
But I must help my mother
Stand up straight...
Are we the last ones left alive?
Are we the only human beings
To survive?...
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sector_A]
Rush's 1984 album "Grace Under Pressure" included the track "Red Sector A." The song, written by drummer Neal Peart, focuses on the experience of a person struggling to survive at an unnamed prison camp. "Red Sector A" was particularly meaningful to the band's lead singer/bassist/keyboardist Geddy Lee:From "How the Holocaust rocked Rush front man Geddy Lee", Jewish News Weekly, June 25, 2004:
The seeds for the song were planted nearly 60 years ago in April 1945 when British soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Lee’s mother, Manya (now Mary) Rubenstein, was among the survivors. (His father, Morris Weinrib, was liberated from Dachau a few weeks later.) The whole album “Grace Under Pressure,” says Lee, who was born Gary Lee Weinrib, “is about being on the brink and having the courage and strength to survive.”
Though “Red Sector A,” like much of the album from which it comes, is set in a bleak, apocalyptic future, what Lee calls “the psychology” of the song comes directly from a story his mother told him about the day she was liberated.
“I once asked my mother her first thoughts upon being liberated,” Lee says during a phone conversation. “She didn’t believe [liberation] was possible. She didn’t believe that if there was a society outside the camp how they could allow this to exist, so she believed society was done in.”
- What motivated Rush to write Red Sector A?
- According to the lyrics, what impact did the camp have on its captives physically and mentally?
- In the song, what hope surfaces for the camp's captives?
- According to the final lines of the song, what are the captives left thinking and feeling after being freed?
1.He was motivated to write the song because he has family members that has survived the holocaust.
ReplyDelete2. They were too weak that they didn't even feel hunger or fear it was like their emotions were gone.
3. It increases the hopes for the Jews to survive.
4. The Jews feelings were confused because it was hard for them to see that it's too good to be true and they were thinking "Wow I am finally free and I can't believe that I survived."
MR
1. rush was motivated to write the song because he has some family members that went though this.
ReplyDelete2. they were to week, they didn't feel hunger, the sickness made them go incain.
3.they hope that it will end soon.
4.they are thinking of the people that didn't stay alive.
ap
Lee wrote the song about the experiences of his parents in concentration camps.
ReplyDeletePeople became physically sick and mentally ill. They were starved and beaten.
The captives hear gunfire and think are we going to die or be rescued?
Are we the only ones alive? Are we the only ones who survived?
RM
1. He was motivated to write the song because he has family members that survived the holocaust.
ReplyDelete2. They were too weak to be hunger, the sickness made them insane.
3. The hope is that they will survive and that they will be free.
4. The captives left are thinking and feeling after being freed are that they did survive and no one is left.
cm
1. Band's lead singer Geddy Lee's Mom was liberated from/surviver of the Nazi concentration camp.
ReplyDelete2. The prisoners spirits were broken, there was so much death and despar, people whent mad.
3. The hope of being saved from the Nazi concentration camp.
4. The captives were wundering if they were the only ones left thatsurvive.
LE
SM
ReplyDelete1. Lee's mother was in a concentration camp.
2. They were starved and they "had a heart they could not feel"
3. In the song they hear gunfire at the gate and they think they are being rescued.
4. They wonder if they were the last people left alive.
1. Lee has a family member was considering of being survive with experience in Concentration Camp w/ other Jewish people too..
ReplyDelete2. The people was too weakling to feeling any hungry and often get sickness.
3. They hope thing will being saved from bad experiences in Concentration Camp, that they wouldn't want live that way once again.
4. They was wondering if one of them will eventually still a live today even from horrible experience from Nazi's Concentration Camp.
1: he wanted to tell people about the holocaust.
ReplyDelete2: the camp was horrible fisically because they were allways beatin and they were even raped.. so that gives them mental scares.
3: it has them have hope to survive
4: they prabablly want to know if they are the only ones alive
AR
1He was tell people that holocaust euftid a lot of human beings.
ReplyDelete2That they cud die evewaer.
3It gives them hope but from all the killing that they have seen they can not be shoer.
4The song is tacking abot is there pelpe that wont kill them?
1. the stories his mother told him.
ReplyDelete2. People were so mentille not right that they could not feal the pain of hungher and weak ness.
3. "is this the day that will be free from this evil place of killing.
4.are they normal thinking human being left.
Pw suckers