The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz

Echoes of history’s discords – book review by Dr Anne Sarzin

At this time of the year when Yom Hashoah remembrance ceremonies around the Jewish world evoke painful memories of our personal and collective traumatic histories, Anne Sebba’s remarkable book, The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, reminds us that hope, courage, friendship, faith and love are potential paths to survival, despite oppressive circumstances.

It seems inconceivable that there could be music in Auschwitz, a place of brutal sadists, where torture was meted out so randomly, where unfathomably cruel medical experimentation was practised, and where there was a sense of all-pervading death, with crematoria chimneys spewing clouds of black ashes that descended mercilessly on the hapless inmates below.

But there were orchestras, both male and female, that served a dual purpose—pragmatic and psychological—for the Nazis. Slave labourers leaving and returning through the camp gates had to march five abreast, in strict time to the music, to facilitate counting by the Nazis; and anyone out of step suffered extreme punishments. The music served a secondary purpose of deluding and, indeed, reassuring new arrivals that, if there’s music and culture here, this can’t be such a bad place after all.

Historian Anne Sebba has written an authoritative book documenting the origin, scope, participants—orchestral players, soloists, music copyists and conductors—and the inner life of the women’s orchestra in Auschwitz; how it preserved the lives of these women, both Jewish and Catholic, giving them a fragile sense of security despite the ever-present fear of imminent death in the adjacent gas chambers. For this invaluable and well-researched account of the women’s orchestra, Sebba has relied on a range of Holocaust testimonies, from memoirs, books and recordings to scholarly primary sources, including interviews with two living survivors of the women’s orchestra, cellist Anita Lasker Wallfisch, (at the time of Sebba’s writing) 99-year-old and living in London, and violinist Hilde (Hildegard) Grunbaum, also aged 99, who lives on a kibbutz in Israel.

If a central character emerges from this book it is the dedicated and compelling Alma Rosé, Gustave Mahler’s niece, a concert violinist with an established reputation in Europe for her musical virtuosity. As the orchestra’s conductor, she understood the orchestra and its members had to please their Nazi masters or face dire consequences.

While there were a few professional and competent musicians in the orchestra, many relied on a limited musical education while still at school. Alma, a rigorous disciplinarian, strove to weld these widely disparate orchestral members into a semblance of professionalism. Her harsh regime bore fruit but also triggered resentment at times. The desirable musical unity she nurtured and the excellence to which she aspired were essential when performing adequately for SS taskmasters, who needed entertainment and diversion, at all hours of the day and night, especially after their killing sprees.

These performances, however, masked the deep fault lines fracturing orchestral cohesion, attributable in part to the religious and national differences between the Jewish and Catholic members of the orchestra. Surprisingly, despite the all-pervasive fear of the gas chambers that tormented everyone, the Jewish members still experienced antisemitism from their Catholic counterparts in the orchestra, so deeply embedded was their Polish antipathy towards their Jewish colleagues. The Catholics were ‘political’ prisoners and, as such, entitled to certain privileges, such as food parcels from home, which heightened the two groups’ division and estrangement.

Nonetheless, they united as best they could to ensure their collective salvation and protection from the unremitting existential dangers.  They all understood that Alma’s harsh regime and insistence on musical excellence preserved the group, from day to day. Tragically, Alma died in suspicious circumstances from what was thought to be food poisoning and, without her dynamic leadership, mastery of the repertoire, constant tutoring and strategic planning, the orchestra’s standards inevitably slipped and their future appeared bleak and uncertain.

Anne Sebba’s tone throughout the book is one of historical objectivity, which is invaluable in this exploration of human beings plunged into a cauldron of inhumane and unspeakably brutal conditions. She delineates with telling details the courage and loyalty that so many showed in intolerable situations, and their redemptive commitment to the wellbeing, safety and survival of others. The personal stories that emerge are immensely moving and testify to the inner strength that sustained their spirits and focused their minds on better outcomes and potential futures in a better world. This ‘biography’ of an orchestra performing in satanic circumstances confirms the indomitable value of life, which Alma and her musicians cherished and manifested in every note while playing for their very lives.

 

The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A story of survival

Anne Sebba

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London

2025