Skeleton Kids
The Mescaline Babies Lyrics

The Mescaline Babies’ song, Skeleton Kids, is a haunting and poetic representation of the horrors of the Holocaust. The lyrics convey the feeling of absolute control and the absence of hope that the victims of concentration camps faced. The opening lines, “Not a word, not a breath, Disobedience means death,” highlight the oppressive nature of the camps, where prisoners were not allowed to speak, much less object to their treatment. The song goes on to describe the systematic way in which inmates were dehumanized - they were all “marked with perversion” and reduced to “numbers” and “shades.” Even in death, they were mere smoke and ashes, with nothing left to commemorate their lives.

However, amidst all the despair and dehumanization, there is a glimmer of defiance. The chorus, with its repeated exhortations to “dance,” carries a sense of rebellion. The “kids of the Birkenau,” the youngest inmates of the notorious death camp, are urged to dance despite the bleakness of their situation. The connotations of this act are potent - dancing is a symbol of life and vitality, and as such, it represents a small act of resistance against the forces that seek to destroy. This defiance is also evident in the reference to the “unpure” race - here, the song acknowledges the inhumanity of the Nazi ideology, which wished to wipe out whole groups of people based on their ethnicity.

Overall, Skeleton Kids is a poignant and powerful evocation of the trauma of the Holocaust. The lyrics speak to the strength and dignity of the victims, who refused to let go of their humanity even in the most inhumane of circumstances.