I was the only cellist in the girls’ orchestra

As part of the DW film project “Classics under the swastika,” DWdocumentary director Christian Berger spoke to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch about her time in the Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps.

Interview Christian Berger, documentary director

After first having been in prison in Breslau, you were transported to Auschwitz in 1943.

The prisons were completely overcrowded back then. And why would one want the Jews to occupy that space? One day they called me and said that I was being sent to Auschwitz. I got there at night. The next morning there was a reception ceremony. There were many prisoners who did the reception ceremony with us, so to speak.

What did this ceremony look like?

The girl who was in charge of me asked, “What’s your name, where are you from?” And she also asked, “What did you do before?” I played cello. “Fantastic! There’s a music ensemble here, stay here,” she said. I was already undressed, with a toothbrush in my hand, and she ran away and fetched the conductor. That was the violinist Alma Rosé. She was immediately enthusiastic. “Finally I have a cello!” There was no cello in the girls’ orchestra. I had arrived at the right moment. It was an absurd conversation. I was rigid, naked and Alma Rosé asks me: “Where did you study, what did you study?” And that’s how I got into the orchestra. I was the only cellist. Alma managed to make something out of the girls’ orchestra that was acceptable. If our music had been deemed too bad, that would have been the end of us.

On what occasions did the orchestra play there?

Mainly our task was to play marching music when thousands of prisoners marched out early in the morning to work in the factories, and the same in the evening. And when that was done, we went back to the block and learned the repertoire. Because on Sunday there were concerts for the amusement of those in power. The prisoners could also hear the concerts and the reaction varied greatly. It was an insult to some, but I’ve also read of people saying that the music gave them a chance to dream their way out of hell for a few minutes.

Are there any pieces of music that you still associate with that time? For example Schumann’s “Träumerei”, which was performed for Joseph Mengele.

Yes, but don’t think I’m about to faint. It is such a crazy idea when you ask: “Can you still hear Schumann’s Träumerei?” Of course! Life for me has two sides: one was hell and the other normal life. The Nazis managed to destroy a lot. But the music, you can’t destroy it! You can try, but it’s impossible!

How did you feel back then, in 1945, when the war was over?

We had been liberated, but we had problems. The English divided the people in Bergen Belsen into nationalities and said “go home”. If you ask me what I am, I’ll say I’m German. And if they asked, where is your home? Then I said in Wroclaw, which is Polish. So, in other words, I didn’t have a home. I am the typical “displaced person”. They didn’t know what to do with these people. We sat in Belsen for months until I found relatives in England and that’s how we finally ended up in England.

The German-British cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is one of the last known survivors of the Auschwitz girls’ orchestra. In lectures and at schools, she still reports today on her experiences as a victim of National Socialism and the Holocaust.