"Red Sector A"
Single by Rush
from the album Grace Under Pressure
Released	1984
Genre	Progressive Rock
Length	5:09
Rush singles chronology
"The Body Electric" (1984)	"Red Sector A" (1984)	"Afterimage" (1984)
Grace Under Pressure track listing
"Afterimage" (Track 2)	"Red Sector A" (Track 3)	"The Enemy Within" (Track 4)

Red Sector A is a song by Rush that chronicles The Holocaust. Perhaps the most well-known of Holocaust-influenced rock songs, Red Sector A first appeared on the band's hit 1984 album Grace Under Pressure, and has been a staple of the band's live shows ever since. Rush - Grace Under Pressure album cover Used on Wikipedia under fair use guidelines: Low resolution copy of the album cover RedWolf 04:56, Feb 11, 2004 (UTC) This is an album cover. ... A collection of various CD singles In music, a single is a short recording of one or more separate tracks. ... Rush is a Canadian rock band comprising bassist, keyboardist, and vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. ... Rush (Grace Under Pressure tour photo) Grace Under Pressure is the tenth studio album by the Canadian rock band Rush, released in 1984 (see 1984 in music). ... A music genre is a category (or genre) of pieces of music that share a certain style or basic musical language (van der Merwe 1989, p. ... Progressive rock (sometimes shortened to prog, prog rock, or progrock) is a subgenre of rock music which arose in the late 1960s, reached the peak of its popularity in the 1970s, and has continued as a form of popular music to this day. ... Rush is a Canadian rock band comprising bassist, keyboardist, and vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. ... This article is about the year 1984. ... This article is about the year 1984. ... This article is about the year 1984. ... Rush (Grace Under Pressure tour photo) Grace Under Pressure is the tenth studio album by the Canadian rock band Rush, released in 1984 (see 1984 in music). ... The Fear Series, or as its more commonly known among Rushs fanbase, The Fear Trilogy, is a set of four songs by the band Rush. ... Rush is a Canadian rock band comprising bassist, keyboardist, and vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. ... This article is becoming very long. ... This article is about the year 1984. ... Rush (Grace Under Pressure tour photo) Grace Under Pressure is the tenth studio album by the Canadian rock band Rush, released in 1984 (see 1984 in music). ...

The song was inspired by Geddy Lee's memories of his mother's stories about the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, where she was held prisoner. Bergen-Belsen, sometimes referred to as just Belsen, was a German concentration camp in the Nazi era. ...

History

The seeds for Red Sector A were planted over 60 years ago in April 1945 when British soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Rush bassist & vocalist Geddy Lee’s mother, Manya (now Mary) Rubenstein, was among the survivors. Lee's father Morris Weinrib was liberated from the Dachau concentration camp a few weeks later. Year 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1945 calendar). ... Bergen-Belsen, sometimes referred to as just Belsen, was a German concentration camp in the Nazi era. ... Geddy Lee OC (born Gary Lee Weinrib, July 29, 1953) is a Jewish Canadian musician who is the vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the progressive rock group Rush. ... Memorial at the camp, 1997. ...

"I once asked my mother her first thoughts upon being liberated," Lee said. "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."

Lee related the story to band drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, who took that sentiment and wrote Red Sector A. Peart came up with lines such as: Neil Ellwood Peart (IPA: ) OC, (born September 12, 1952 in Hagersville, Ontario) is the drummer and lyricist for the progressive rock band Rush. ...

Are we the last ones left alive?

Are we the only human beings to survive?

"The whole album," Lee said of Grace Under Pressure, "is about being on the brink and having the courage and strength to survive."

In a 1984 interview Neil Peart describes writing Red Sector A: This article is about the year 1984. ...

"I read a first person account of someone who had survived the whole system of trains and work camps and Bergen-Belsen and all of that, and this person, she was a young girl, like thirteen years old when she was sent into it, and lived in it for a few years, and then, uh, through first person accounts from other people who came out at the end of it, always glad to be alive, which again was the essence of grace, grace under pressure is that through all of it, these people never gave up the strong will to survive, through the utmost horror, and total physical privations of all kinds, they just never, ever wanted to be the ones who were shot, you know, they were always the unlucky ones, which was an important thing that I wanted to bring out. And also, what I learned from the first person nonfiction accounts that I read was that these people would keep their little rituals of their religion, and whatever, and if it was supposed to be a fasting day, even if they were starving to death, they would turn down their little bit of bread and their little bit of gruel, because this was a fasting day, and they had to hold on to something, some essence of normality, you know, that was important. And that moved me, you know. That's, that's intense.

...I wanted to take a little bit out of being specific and, and just describe the circumstances and try to look at the way people responded to it, and another really important and to me really moving image that I got from a lot of these accounts was that at the end of it, these people of course had been totally isolated from the rest of the world, from their families, from any news at all, and they, in cases that I read, believed that they were the last people surviving. You know, the people liberating them and themselves were the only surviving people in the world, and it sounds a bit melodramatic put into a song I realize, but the point is that it's true, so, you know, I didn't feel like I needed to avoid it as being over-dramatic, because, you know, I heard of it and read of it in more than one account."

The song title 'Red Sector A' was named for the area in which the band witnessed the launch of Columbia on April 12th, 1981.

Lyrics

• Red Sector A

Video

• Red Sector A (from Grace Under Pressure 1984)
• Red Sector A (from A Show of Hands 1988)

Sources

• How the Holocaust rocked Rush’s Geddy Lee - Canadian Jewish News
• Rock 'N' Roll Never Forgets Holocaust's Horror, Palm Beach Post, May 6, 2005

External links

• Official Rush website