In 1943, German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Almost fifty women and girls from eleven nations were drafted into a hurriedly assembled band that would play marching music to other inmates, forced labourers who left each morning and returned, exhausted and often broken, at the end of the day. While still living amid the most brutal and dehumanising of circumstances, they were also made to give weekly concerts for Nazi officers, and individual members were sometimes summoned to give solo performances of an officer’s favourite piece of music. It was the only entirely female orchestra in any of the Nazi prison camps and, for almost all of the musicians chosen to take part, being in the orchestra was to save their lives.
What role could music play in a death camp? What was the effect on those women who owed their survival to their participation in a Nazi propaganda project? And how did it feel to be forced to provide solace to the perpetrators of a genocide that claimed the lives of their family and friends? In The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, award-winning historian Anne Sebba traces these tangled questions of deep moral complexity with sensitivity and care.
From Alma Rosé, the orchestra’s main conductor, niece of Gustav Mahler and a formidable pre-war celebrity violinist, to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, its teenage cellist and last surviving member, Sebba draws on meticulous archival research and exclusive first-hand accounts to tell the full and astonishing story of the orchestra, its members and the response of other prisoners for the very first time.
What role could music play in a death camp? What was the effect on those women who owed their survival to their participation in a Nazi propaganda project? And how did it feel to be forced to provide solace to the perpetrators of a genocide that claimed the lives of their family and friends? In The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, award-winning historian Anne Sebba traces these tangled questions of deep moral complexity with sensitivity and care.
From Alma Rosé, the orchestra’s main conductor, niece of Gustav Mahler and a formidable pre-war celebrity violinist, to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, its teenage cellist and last surviving member, Sebba draws on meticulous archival research and exclusive first-hand accounts to tell the full and astonishing story of the orchestra, its members and the response of other prisoners for the very first time.
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
Anne Sebba brings meticulous research and a brilliant writer's eye to one of the darkest questions of World War II. What would you do to survive and what might be the price?
An important addition to our understanding of Auschwitz, of women's experiences during the Shoah, of the power of music to resist the overwhelming forces of dehumanisation and most especially of apparent paradox that the killers could cherish beautiful music at one moment and then resume their monstrous killing the next. The research is prodigious, the stories gripping. The book deepens all that we know and shows that examining one subset of the victims of Auschwitz, only enhances our understanding of life within the camp
An important record of the incomprehensible cruelty perpetrated in Auschwitz, using music as an instrument of torture. But for those who played, it was a path to survival
Anne Sebba tells this harrowing story with tremendous rigour and care, capturing both the complex horror of the women's situation and the dignity and bravery with which they faced it. An impressive, important, deeply moving book