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RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: november/december 2023 :: RMTnews 30 Send entries to Prize Crossword, RMT, Unity House, 39 Chalton Street, London NWI IJD by January 15, 2024 with your name and address. Last month’s winner is Steve Wood, West Midlands. Please supply bank account details and sort code to receive your prize quickly. Last month’s solution... ACROSS 1 Impressively (10) 8 Daunt (7) 9 Levy (5) 10 Light pigment (5) 11 Apparent (7) 12 Plaster (6) 14 Shortsighted (6) 16 Circular room (7) 17 Unit of weight (5) 19 Leisurely walk (5) 20 Illustrious (7) 21 Advocate of a union of states (10) DOWN 1 Limitless (13) 2 Dish (5) 3 Through two channels (6) 4 Stylishly (7) 5 Correct (13) 6 Type of Salmon (4) 7 Manic (6) 12 Stripe (6) 13 Call together (7) 15 Blue-grey mineral (6) 17 Hot pepper (5) 18 Ballet skirt (4) £50 PRIZE CROSSWORD Glasgow band, The Tenementals have released new versions of the German anti-fascist anthem Die Moorsoldaten (The Peat Bog Soldiers). The song is well-known in Germany, less so here despite versions by Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson. The Tenementals’ versions of Die Moorsoldaten/Peat Bog Soldiers reimagine the song, pared down to drums, bass and Lily Mohaupt’s pure vocals emphasising the stark and haunting melody. As frontman David Archibald puts it “We take a tiger’s leap into the past; but our aim is to blast the song into the future at a time when its spirit of resilience in the face of oppression has great resonance". Composed 90 years ago in 1933 by prisoners of Börgermoor concentration camp, the song was written as a “conscious protest song of resistance against their oppressors”. Johannes Esser, a Ruhr miner wrote the lyrics with communist actor/director Wolfgang Langhoff in 1933 as part of a ‘Circus Konzentrazani’ (Concentration Camp Circus). The camp commandant banned it but hundreds of copies were smuggled out by prisoners and a few weeks later Radio Moscow broadcast the song. By 1936, the song became the political prisoners’ anthem in Sachsenhausen camp and found its way into handwritten concentration camp song books. It made its way to Spain in 1937 with the Thaelmann Battalion of German volunteers in the International Brigades. In 1944, Thomas Geve heard it in Auschwitz. “Ten years ago,” he wrote, “this emotional song of isolated, forgotten German antifascists was sung in the desolated moor camps along the Ems River. Now 400 youthful voices from across Europe give it new life”. The Tenementals’ David Archibald says: “We are alive to the international connections that Glasgow and its inhabitants have made, be they slave traders or anti- fascist fighters in Spain. Peat Bog Soldiers was a major song during the Spanish Civil war and no doubt many Glaswegians who fought in Spain would have been familiar with it”. Checkout The Tenementals on Strength in Numbers Records. ANTI-FASCIST ANTHEM BROUGHT TO LIFE Alex Gordon reviews two new versions of a German classic anti-fascist anthem