“Like stepping into a time machine”: A New App Helps Holocaust Survivors Recall Childhood Songs

A new app helps Holocaust survivors recall and listen to songs from their childhood. In a simple, user-friendly interface, users enter the country they were born in and the relevant years, and the app identifies songs they are likely to recognize and plays them via YouTube.

The app, “Musical Memories,” was created by Tal Engart, a music therapist, and Tom Volinitz, an entrepreneur and software developer, in collaboration with the “Emda” association, which supports families of people with dementia and Alzheimer’s throughout their personal and familial coping process.

Engart, a music therapist working with Holocaust survivors at the “Amcha” association, who researches and develops technologies in the field of mental health, built the app together with his childhood friend, Tom Volinitz. This is not his first social app: in the past he created “The Gaslighter,” an AI-based tool for detecting and preventing gaslighting in relationships, and HarmonicBrain, a technology that enhances focus in podcasts, meditations, and audiobooks through slow and gentle modulation of sound.

“One of the practices in music therapy is to find songs the patient loved as a child or teenager,” Engart explains. “Here we are looking for songs they loved before the Holocaust. On the face of it, they don’t have records, and they don’t remember the names of the songs they used to love before the Holocaust.”

The developers of the "Musical Memories" app, therapist Tal Engert (right) and entrepreneur and software developer Tom Wolynitz (Photo: Private album)

“I asked ChatGPT to find the songs that someone born in Budapest in 1936 would most likely know. When I played the songs to patients, it was incredible, because they remembered and shared memories. Then we took it one step further and built an app. The app itself is very simple: you enter where you lived in childhood, what year you were born, and what language the music you heard was in, and it finds songs you’re likely to recognize, with a link to YouTube.”

“Returning to childhood songs strengthens the structure of the psyche”

The app is based on Google’s language model, Gemini. “On its own, Gemini didn’t manage to accurately identify the songs, so I narrowed it down to songs people were most likely to know, as part of my experience as a music therapist. I gave it parameters, songs sung at ceremonies, holiday songs, children’s songs, songs from films of that period, and then it started finding the right songs.”

Engart explains that the app is deliberately very simple to use because of its target audience—elderly Holocaust survivors. “You can choose songs from childhood, adolescence, or whatever age you want. We made it as simple as possible so that as many people as possible could use it. We translated it into 17 languages, including languages like Filipino and Hindi, so that caregivers can use it for their patients.”

In the video: "Sad Sunday" – a song from Hungary in the 1930s

How does listening to childhood songs affect Holocaust survivors?

“People connect to very strong emotions they had in childhood, before the trauma—it connects them to very happy, positive feelings. It evokes something in their identity. The Holocaust is an event that shattered people’s identity, and their identity did not fully return, because they did not return to the culture and place they came from before. Returning to childhood songs strengthens the structure of the psyche.”

“There are people with dementia, and it’s amazing because they remember entire songs. It creates excitement and joy. In addition, it connects the person playing the music with the person listening. Very often, the listener starts telling stories about the song—where they heard it, what they felt, and so on. Someone told me it felt like I had put them inside a time machine.”

In the video: "Cigarettes" – a Yiddish song from 1932

Music therapy is a form of psychotherapy in which music serves as an additional language of expression. People express themselves through melody, song selection, or shared singing. “When Holocaust survivors hear songs they loved as children, because it was such a long time ago and they don’t remember which songs they liked, it creates very meaningful responses. That is why the app is important—it reminds them of the songs they heard and loved as children.”

It turns out that songs from the 1930s and even earlier can be found on YouTube. According to Engart, “Just as there is ‘Zemereshet’ in Israel, there are old songs from Poland that have been uploaded to YouTube. In almost every session I suggest that a person listen to a song. We search for songs in the app and talk through the music about the past and the present, we sing together, sometimes we even dance together. My colleagues also use it.”

The power of one’s native language

According to Engart, “There is another aspect when it comes to Holocaust survivors: we want to play them music in their native language, because it reaches areas of the brain that songs in other languages do not reach. There is a lot of research showing that music from childhood and adolescence evokes positive emotions. And there is something about childhood music that awakens something that even adolescent music does not.”

In the video: "Tango Milanga" – a song from Poland in the 1930s

Because the app allows users to define time periods, it can also be used for people who are not Holocaust survivors—for example, children of survivors who may want to listen to lullabies their parents sang to them, or younger users as well. “During the current war,” Engart says, “after night sirens when I would return from the shelter, I would turn it on and listen to the Moomins, ‘It’s Only Sport,’ and Jessica.”

To download the app “Musical Memories,” click here: Download for computer | Download for Android | Download for iPhone