← HistoryExtra podcast
HistoryExtra podcast
The women's orchestra of Auschwitz
00:37:56
Anne Sebba uncovers the extraordinary story of the women's orchestra in Auschwitz
Loading summary
Transcript35 lines
- [00:00]
Ann Sever
I was never really a runner. The way I see running is a gift, especially when you have stage four cancer. I'm Ann. I'm running the Boston Marathon presented by bank of America. I run for Dana Farber Cancer Institute to give people like me a chance to thrive in life even with cancer.
- [00:19]
Kristen
Join bank of America in helping Anne's cause. Give if you can at B of a dot com supportann what would you like the power to do? References to charitable organizations is not endorsement by bank of America Corporation Copyright 2025.
- [00:30]
Ann Sever
McDonald's meets the Minecraft universe with one of six collectibles and your choice of a Big Mac or 10 piece McNuggets with spicy nether Flame sauce. Now available with a Minecraft movie meal.
- [00:42]
Kristen
At participating McDonald's for a limited time. A Minecraft movie only in theaters. Spring Fest and Ego Days are here at Lowe's right now. Get a free select EGO 56 volt battery with purchase of a select trimmer, blower or mower kit. Plus shop today for new and exclusive items you need for your lawn. So get ready for spring with the latest in innovation from Ego, the number one rated brand in cordless outdoor power. Only at Lowe's we help you Save offer valid through 4:2. Selection varies by location while supplies last. Wow, this house is cute, but can.
- [01:19]
Ann Sever
I really get in the game in this economy?
- [01:21]
Kristen
I do have savings and I am responsible for ish. Ugh, I should bury it.
- [01:26]
Ann Sever
I'm being wild.
- [01:27]
Kristen
But what if I'm not being wild though? Could I actually score a kick off your home buying journey with Zillow's new buyability tool? It makes it easy to find out what you can afford so you can get off the bench and onto the playing field with confidence. Check your buyability only on Zillow.
- [01:50]
Lauren Good
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. Amid the horrors of Auschwitz, a group of female musicians were forced to play for their lives. Author Anne Seba joins Lauren Good to discuss this women's orchestra exploring how music was used as an instrument of control, how the musicians fought for their own survival, and what happened to them after liberation. And I'm sure many people will be surprised to learn that there was an orchestra in Auschwitz formed of female prisoners. It certainly was a little surprising to me. We associate music with pleasure and the more romantic, but the reality here is very different, isn't it?
- [02:39]
Ann Sever
Yes, I mean, that's absolutely the right place to start. How on earth, in a place of such brutality, death, pain, sadism, all the grimmest words you could find. Could there be something so sublime and beautiful? And in my view, music is the most sublime of all the arts. Well, it does need unpicking a little bit. In fact, there were several male orchestras in all the camps in Auschwitz alone at one point There were about 14 or 15. There was a symphony orchestra. At one point there was a jazz orchestra, but they were male orchestras. So this is the only entirely female orchestra in any of the prisons or camps or ghettos under Nazi control. So it is extraordinary. On the other hand, it wasn't music as you and I would think of when we go to a concert, with one exception, which I'll come to the Sunday concerts. It was an additional use of torture by the Nazis. They thought two things. First of all, they wanted to show the world this is a military camp, it's not an extermination camp. And part of their idea in showing that there was military discipline is to make the prisoners who weren't gassed, the prisoners who went out to work in all the factories and on the demolition squads, if they could march in time as they went out to work. It was this pseudo military idea. It also made it easier for the Nazis to count them in rows of five. So, in fact, what the women's orchestra was asked to do was to play horrible, jaunty marches to make the women feel that they had to stay in line. And if they, heaven help them, put their right foot forward, not their left, that would often earn them a kick from a Nazi brute. So that's the first thing to say, that it wasn't beautiful, pleasurable music until Alma became conductor. And we'll come on to her, I'm sure. But she was such a fine musician that the Nazis asked her to give Sunday concerts in which she was often the soloist, and they would last for three hours. And so that explains the other reason why there was an orchestra in Auschwitz. And that's because the Nazis like to show the world, oh, we're so cultured, you know, we love music. Look how beautiful this is. And we make everything pleasant and wonderful for the prisoners, for the inmates. That wasn't the truth at all. There's just one final thing about why it is so extraordinary that there was a women's orchestra at all. And that's because women in orchestras generally in Eastern Europe in the 20s, were not a thing. Women learnt music perhaps as a cultural activity to play in chamber groups at home with their parents or brother or sister, but actually to find professional female musicians in Vienna that didn't happen. Until late in the 20th century. And a cello, an instrument between your legs, wasn't considered female, female and womanly. So there were lots of girls who perhaps learned the flute at school or the mandolin. But there weren't enough women in the 1930s who could comprise an orchestra. So it was late on when they realized actually they did have enough women. And several of them were pianists or singers. But there was only one cellist, one bass instrument. And that also made the orchestra jolly difficult to balance and to be an orchestra, as we might think of one today.
- [06:37]
Lauren Good
You've mentioned there that this is a little bit later on. What time period are we actually talking about here?
- [06:43]
Ann Sever
We're talking about early in 1943, when the orchestra started under a Polish teacher who was not really a musician. Now all Polish teachers learned music. They had folk songs. And this woman, whose name was Zofia Tchaikovska, probably no relation to Tchaikovsky at all. But the Nazis liked the idea that they had a relation to Tchaikovsky. And they just played a few Polish folk songs from memory, which she turned into marches. It wasn't really doing very well. And then everything changed later on in 43, in the late summer. So the thing to remember is why the Nazis wanted it. And there was this female guard called Maria Mandel, who was almost in charge, not solely in charge. And she got the idea that if she could set up a female orchestra like the men had in the men's camp, that would enhance her prestige. And then Maria Mandel heard by an extraordinary piece of, I can't say luck, because it was terrible for Alma Rose to be in the camp, but it was luck for Maria Mandel to have a European musician of her caliber. And the story of Alma, who was really musical royalty. Her uncle was Gustav Mahler. Her father was the number one violinist in the quartet en Rose. Because she was in her 30s of childbearing years, she was sent to the hideous, ghastly experimental block where they were going to do experiments on female fertility. And thinking that this was her last hour and she was going to die, she dramatically made a final request. She said, can someone bring me a violin? Now, this also needs some explanation. What on earth were all these amazing instruments doing in a place like Auschwitz? Well, when the Jews were rounded up from Eastern Europe, they were told to bring their most precious possessions. And their most precious possessions were not always, but on many occasions, fine instruments. And so the warehouse known as Canada had this extraordinary amount of amazing instruments. And to Alma was brought a violin. She played an amazing tune. A message was Immediately sent to Maria Mandel. We have this virtuoso violinist in the experimental block. And Mandel realized immediately, now my orchestra will be saved. I'll move Tchaikovsky. I'll bring Alma Rose in to be the conductor. And that happened in the late summer, really, August of 1943. And Alma Rose only survived tragically for nine and a half months. So that's what we're talking about mostly when we talk about the orchestra. The orchestra under Alma.
- [09:58]
Lauren Good
Alma's story is such an important thread in the book you mentioned there, that they discovered that she was this virtuoso when she requested the violin. It struck me when I was reading your book, how was it actually discovered who was musically talented in the camp?
- [10:17]
Ann Sever
I think what I have to say, first of all in answer to that question is you cannot make sense of any of this. There is no rational explanation. There's nothing logical. And there are so many anecdotal stories that I'll probably spill out during our conversation, make you think this is nonsense. You know, here are the Nazis trying their hardest, their damnedest, to kill as many Jews as they can. And yet they're rescuing Jewish musicians. They say that Jewish music is degenerate, but they're allowing Jewish musicians to play. So you have to really take that out of your mind that there's logic to all of this. And then if you strip that back, how did they find all these musicians? Well, once they decided on an orchestra, it was really word of mouth. They put notices in all the blocks saying, if you know anyone who's a musician. And when the arriving inmates were processed, bizarrely, people often asked, just in conversation, what did you do? And not knowing, a lot of the women said, oh, I'm a musician. And then the response would be, you'll be saved. If you're a musician, you're wanted. I mean, there were a few other categories. If you spoke lots of languages, that helped. If you were a fine tailor. The Nazi women loved to have fine clothes made. So they would take all the incoming clothes removed from Jews and have them made and tailored into fine suits. So being a tailor was another valuable occupation. I mean, honestly, at one level, it's sick making at another level. The subtitle of my book is A Story of Survival. And I do feel very strongly the survival mechanism is so powerful in all of us that you do whatever you need to do to survive. And in my view, all these women are heroines. They're heroines because they survived. And survival is the way you resist the Nazis who were trying to kill you. So it's bizarre and you can't explain it, and you certainly shouldn't judge it, but if you could play an instrument, word got around that you could be saved.
- [12:38]
Lauren Good
It is a story of survival, and music did save these women's lives. And I think this is really encapsulated. There's a story you share in the book Flora Jacobs. She burns her hand on a stove and is unable to play. And when she explains why she can't play the accordion, she is told she is lucky that the orchestra only has two other accordionists, otherwise she would be gassed. I mean, that really puts into perspective, doesn't it, how important music was in preserving these lives?
- [13:07]
Ann Sever
Yes. And for me, her smile is something that radiates this desire to live against all the odds. And so, yes, she was lucky, but clearly one of the SS bosses had his eye on her and noticed her and was prepared to overlook the fact that she wasn't able to play for a bit. And she recovered and was able to play. But I think the other story about survival is that they weren't all top musicians, far from it. Some of them had had a couple of years in school learning the recorder, or, you know, the youngest in the orchestra was 14. So what could they do? Well, they did play wind instruments. It was a very unbalanced orchestra, but a lot of them were used as copyists because the orchestra was so unbalanced. A lot had to be rearranged, rewritten for the instruments that they did. So Alma, with her great forceful personality, even persuaded the SS at one point to bring in a grand piano. And if you've ever been to Auschwitz, these blocks are tiny. You struggle to think how they would live in this block with a table for copying and a grand piano. But she said that so much had to be rewritten, which it did, and scored for four voices, because they were trying to save whoever they could. And that really was such a powerful motif for their lives. If they could save a mother, a sister, a friend, or somebody in their friendship group, then the friendship groups of two or even three were what helped get them through. And they would look out for each other to maybe somebody who they knew was talented but couldn't really play, and they could teach them how to copy out music. And paper was in short supply. They didn't have the music. They had to write out the staves themselves, the lines, and then copy these different parts under Alma's fierce supervision for these different instruments. And that was really painstaking work. It took hours. So although it was mostly musicians. As long as they had some musical knowledge and were prepared to work hard and long hours, then they would be taken and they had a chance at life.
- [15:43]
Kristen
This episode is brought to you by the Nissan Armada Pro 4X. With a twin turbo V6 engine, ready to propel your adventures. Up to 8500 pounds of towing capacity to haul all your favorite toys in space for eight passengers, Nissan's most powerful car yet will chew up and spit out anything you throw at it. Learn more about the all new 20002025 Nissan Armada at nissanusa.com Towing capacity varies by configuration. See Nissan Towing Guide and Owner's Manual for additional information. Always secure cargo.
- [16:15]
Ann Sever
At New Balance we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way way. And that's what running's all about.
- [16:37]
Kristen
Run your way@newbalance.com Running this episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season and we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to hear. $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now here's a good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [17:13]
Lauren Good
I really struggle to get my I have visited Auschwitz. I really struggle to get my head around the fact that there was a grand piano in the concentration camp. It's a very strange image, isn't it?
- [17:25]
Ann Sever
Of course it is. And nobody quite knows where it came from. I found in the archives a record in the men's camp of them fishing out a piano from the river, and they restored it. But they didn't have ivory for the keys, so they had colored keys and they put that probably in the brothel that Hurst set up for them. And some people wondered if perhaps it was the piano from the brothel that was brought. But no. This according to the memoirs of one of the women, there was Berstine grand piano only for a short time, and probably it was requisitioned from the town of Oswiciem and then it was given back because it didn't last. But it was absolutely essential for Alma to teach these kids, these children, their parts. And she was really fierce, some people say brutal in the way she made them rehearse such long hours and although some of the other women in the camp thought they were privileged just because their hair was allowed to grow, they had slightly smarter clothes for concerts, they weren't really privileged in what you and I would call privilege. They weren't given much more food. Perhaps occasionally a Nazi would come by with a bit of leftover that they didn't want.
- [18:54]
Lauren Good
I'd like to touch on what you said there about other prisoners assuming that they had a much more luxurious existence. That must have created huge tensions.
- [19:06]
Ann Sever
It absolutely did. And I think I can understand so clearly both sides. That's what I really wanted to do with this book, because there have been a few individual accounts, let's say six, seven of the women have written their own accounts, and that was invaluable. There are also these extraordinary interviews online. Steven Spielberg, after Schindler's List, set up the Schoah foundation, interviewing women and men. But I was looking at women in their 70s and 80s who aren't alive now. So I had these interviews beaming into my sitting room as if I was with the women. And I really wanted to look at the orchestra in 360 degrees in the Round. I didn't just want to look at the women who actually played. I wanted to try and understand the role of music in the camps, but how the other women reacted to it. I interviewed one amazingly brave woman who's still alive in London, who was taken from her village in Romania, and she remembered having to sit through three hours of a classical concert. And I said to her, how did you feel about it? And she just shrugged her shoulders and said, well, it was just one more thing we had to endure. She said, I didn't know what, you know, what did I know from classical music? She said to me. So we sat and we listened. So that was a sort of relatively ho hum response. But there were other women, particularly the French communists, who were furious with these women and believed that they were collaborating to one degree. Well, you could argue that anybody who survived Auschwitz was doing Nazi bidding. If you worked in a demolition squad or if you worked in the office or Canada, the warehouse, any of them was to an extent working the Nazi system. And that's what Primo Levi describes as the gray zone. He describes that as the worst crime that the Nazis committed in making the prisoners do what the Nazis wanted to uphold the system. I don't see it like that at all myself. I think that surviving is an act of resistance for the Nazis trying to destroy you. But, you know, I get it. If you were an ordinary prisoner being Sent out to work in the cold on a demolition squad. And you might have bricks falling on you. And you were exhausted and you had no food. And you tried to march in time to this wretched music. Beating out this insane rhythm on the drums. You would be deeply angry if you saw young women sitting there who you believed had privileges just because they had a slightly easier day. I mean, they didn't think they had an easy day. Because rehearsing for 10 hours with Alma's ayah was not easy for them. But I guess it was easier than being on a demolition squad. And there's one woman who was punished for not marching in time. And another woman who was punished cause she found a turnip root or something and tried to hide it. So she was punished by having to sit on her knees with a hot brick in both hands for hours on end. And all she could hear was the orchestra music all the time beating in her ears. And she didn't hate the orchestra. But I can't imagine that they loved the orchestra at that point. Because they felt it was, which it was indeed for the people who played and the people who had to listen, an additional instrument of torture. I mean, we started this interview by talking about the incompatibility of beautiful music in a horrendous death camp. Well, it was a perversion of music. It wasn't music as we know and love it. It was music being used. It was an abuse of music.
- [23:21]
Lauren Good
I want to talk about what the lives of these women who did survive were like after liberation. Surely, you know, these women who really enjoyed music, even if they weren't professional, would remind them now of their time spent in Auschwitz. How many of these members, if there's something you can answer, did continue to play their instruments?
- [23:43]
Ann Sever
That is such an interesting question. And I really wanted to know the answer. You can't generalize, actually. So you have somebody who's still alive, Anita Laska Walfisch, who is amazing. She's 99. And she's set up a sort of musical dynasty where her son and daughter and grandsons all play. And she would argue very clearly, music is music. Whatever else the Nazis did, they can't kill music. And she played the cello, and she's a founding member of the English Chamber Orchestra. She married a pianist and music continued to be a very important part of her life. Then you take somebody who was known in the orchestra as La Grande Helene. There were three, or at one point even four women called Helene or Helena. So to distinguish them, one was La Grande Helene and one The Petite Helene and La Grande Helene was really so called because she was incredibly talented. Pre war, she was sometimes known as Ita, Ita Viernick, or she had many names. But she gave up after the war because she was so damaged. She said she didn't have the stamina. And being a violinist, which is a career she would have loved and been well qualified for, demands stamina. And I think she was slightly broken inside as well. But being a professional musician was just too much for her health. Her health couldn't cope with it after Auschwitz, so that was slightly different. But I've got pictures in my book of two of the women who became teachers. And famously, the Greek woman, Lilly Asael, became a teacher in the Bronx. She never remarried. Her fiance was killed in Auschwitz, and she became a teacher of the child prodigy, Murray Pariah, who went on to become one of the world's greatest pianists. I mean, admittedly, she only taught him when he was about 4 or 5, but still she was a piano teacher in the Bronx, and Flora taught her grandchildren. So I think for many of them, music continued. But Anita really is the exception in remaining a professional musician.
- [26:08]
Lauren Good
And we thought that Anita was the only surviving member of the orchestra in recent years. But you did meet a member of the orchestra, Hilda, before she sadly passed away. And you chart your meeting so beautifully in the epilogue of the book. What was it like to meet her?
- [26:26]
Ann Sever
I mean, how lucky was I just to catch her in those final months? Yes, everybody assumed it's one of the dangers. Don't rely on Wikipedia. Every piece of information on the Internet said there's only one thriving member of the orchestra. But luckily I was contacted by a young girl, the granddaughter of another player, the granddaughter of Regina, who lived on the kibbutz, who saw the announcement of my book in the bookseller and said, hey, Anne, you know Hilda's still alive and she lives on the kibbutz. Well, I can tell you I didn't waste much time in booking a flight and going out to see her. And it was just extraordinary. Hilda really deserves a little moment to herself, because none of them were leaders. You know, it was a group. And that's really what I feel I've written about a group broken up into many subgroups. But Hilda had the extraordinary foresight. When the Nazis knew that the Russians were coming to Auschwitz and they wanted to leave the camp, they wanted to abandon it and destroy all evidence of their evil deeds. Another bizarre fact, they divided the orchestra. At this time, the orchestra that had always been 50, 50 Christian, Jewish they suddenly divided them again and they sent the Jewish members on a train to Belsen and they made the Christian members do the death march two months later to Ravensbruck. But Hilda, although, you know, this was a terrifying moment, here are these Nazis with whips and dogs who can shoot you at an instant if they don't like you. Hilda disobeyed orders which were to change out of your clothes and live in the rags that most prisoners lived in, and to get on the train straight away. Well, she went back into the block and she rescued some precious artifacts, the bag that she carried the music around in, and a couple of books that had belonged to Alma, who had died by then. Why? Because she somehow understood instinctively that if she didn't preserve these hard artifacts, which are now in Yad Vashem, the museum in Israel, there would be people who would say this could never have happened, as indeed we know there are. And Hilda kept these artifacts with her in Belsen. She then took them with her to Israel. I find her story is so inspiring. And when I saw her in Israel, she was 99, she lived to 100 and died after her centenary. So, I mean, she is really the most extraordinary character.
- [29:19]
Lauren Good
Her story is so fascinating. I also wanted to talk about your personal connection to this story and you discuss your father's connection in the book. Would you mind explaining what that is?
- [29:35]
Ann Sever
I know, I mean, I have only put a paragraph of my father in the book. Cause I really did not want this book to be about me or him. It's about these extraordinary women. But I am happy to talk about it. So I'm a historian and I specialized in Europe between the wars, and I've always been fascinated by the middle of this century. And I've often said, you know, you can't call yourself a historian of the 20th century if you don't write about this grimness right at the center. And on the other hand, I've always felt I can't write about the Holocaust, although I feel a connection to it. I'm not a survivor, in the fashionable phrase. It's not my story to tell. So I'd shied away from writing about the Holocaust because I didn't feel entitled until this moment when I started researching my own father's story. Well, he was a tank commander and he was part of the British unit that went into Belsen not at the liberation, but a month later. So it was liberated on April 15, so long after Auschwitz was liberated, or I say long after, I mean long in terms of the fact that thousands of People were still dying. The war was far from over. And in Belsen they might not deliberately kill you, but you would die of typhus or malnourishment or diphtheria or myriad other illnesses. So my father, like many people of his generation, just didn't really want to talk about his war. He'd been a soldier since 1938 and he was demobbed in 46, so eight long years. And I was born five years after the war and called myself a historian and never really had a proper interview with my father. I mean, shame on me. And I absolutely embrace that. And I can't bring him back. But I did find in the archives at the National Archives at Kew with his handwriting, an account of his time in Belsen, particularly this page, where on May 24, there was a Red Cross concert in Belsen with some of the remnants of the orchestra who were performing, including Lillie Mate and Eva Steiner singing and Eva Stozolska. So, you know, three members of the orchestra who were in Belsen. And on May 24, with my father's signature, he organized to send the Churchill flamethrower tanks in to destroy the lice ridden huts of Belsen. And once I discovered the juxtaposition, well, more than that, on the same day these two things were happening. I mean, I kick myself for not interviewing my father, but I am just absolutely certain he must have gone to this concert. He must have crossed paths with the women of the orchestra. And I was hooked on the story once I found that. So that was my way into the story.
- [32:45]
Lauren Good
Must have been such an incredible moment. And this is a very different history of the Holocaust. It's different to what I've read previously. Hilda tells you in the epilogue that we earned our life because we could play, which I think is an incredible summary of what you're writing. What main teachings would you like people to take from your research?
- [33:09]
Ann Sever
I struggled with what to say in the epilogue because I didn't actually want to make some grand plea for international cooperation. And what I've concluded by saying is it's small acts of kindness. It's perhaps sharing your food with somebody. It's teaching somebody how to make a brazier because they hadn't worn underwear for years out of a leftover silk dress. It's making a Christmas card with a crucifix when you're Jewish, and that doesn't come naturally. It's just being kind to other people. And it's these small acts of sisterhood and looking after each other that I, in The end was so bowled over by, and I think possibly you're kind enough to say it's different from other books on the Holocaust. I think it's different because there hasn't been a lot of attention paid to the female experience. And I didn't set out to write it as a feminist book. It's absolutely not that at all. But I do realize now I've completed it, that it shines a light on an aspect of the experience of women during the war. Both the Polish sisters who were the first prisoners sent to Auschwitz, and then later on the Jewish prisoners who were sent there to be killed, but who earned their lives by playing and by being supportive. So I don't want to make a grand plea of learning anything other than this very important plea of remember their names. And, you know, this was the female experience of war.
- [34:58]
Lauren Good
That was the author, presenter and lecturer, Ann Sever. Her book, the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz A Story of Survival, is out now. You can find plenty more educational resources about the Holocaust, including a three part virtual lecture series from historian Lawrence Rees on our website, historyextra.com thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jack Bateman.
- [35:27]
Kristen
Hey, Kristen, how's it tracking with Carvana Value Tracker? What else? Oh, it's tracking, in fact. Value surge alert. Trucks up 2.5%, vans down 1.7, just as predicted.
- [35:42]
Ann Sever
Mm.
- [35:43]
Kristen
So we gonna. I don't know, could sell. Could hold the power to always know our car's worth. Exhilarating, isn't it, Tracking Always know your car's worth with Carvana Value Tracker.