Fania Fénelon
Fania Fénelon (born on September 2, 1919 in Paris as Fania Goldstein ; died on December 19, 1983 there ) was a French chanson singer and Holocaust survivor .
Life
Fania Goldstein was born as the daughter of the engineer Jules Goldstein and his wife Maria Davidovna Bernstein, newcomers to Paris from the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Opinions differ about the date of her birth. According to her autobiographical self-testimony, she celebrated her 25th birthday on September 2, 1944 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. In Paris, she attended the Conservatoire de Paris , where she was taught by Germaine Martinelli . She also worked at night as a chanson singer under the stage name Fania Fénelon in Parisian bars.
As a Jew and as a supporter of the Resistance , she was arrested by the Gestapo in May 1943 and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . A "girls' orchestra" existed there on the orders of the camp SS . Fania Fénelon arranged the repertoire for the musicians. After 15 months in Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, she and her fellow prisoners were freed by British soldiers.
She performed again in Paris and became a widely known chanson singer. In the 1960s she was active in the cultural life of the GDR, where she had moved in 1966 with her partner, the Afro-American singer Aubrey W. Pankey . In Berlin she lived on Unter den Linden, gave chanson evenings, recorded records for the GDR label Amiga and taught drama students at the Leipzig theater school " Hans Otto " in the subject chanson. In 1971 she went back to Paris after the death of Aubrey Pankey.
From 1973 to 1975 she wrote the book Das Mädchenorchester in Auschwitz , in which she shared her concentration camp experiences. As a reminder, she used her diary from the camp. Together with Arthur Miller , she wrote the screenplay for the 1980 television film “Das Mädchenorchester von Auschwitz” ( Playing for Time ), in which Vanessa Redgrave played the leading role of Fania Fénelon. Stefan Heucke was inspired by the book for his opera project Das Frauenorchester von Auschwitz , which premiered in 2006. In 1980 her autobiography was published in German by the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime ( VVN ), the Röderberg Verlag in Frankfurt.
literature
- Sursis pour l'orchestre . Témoignage recueilli by Marcelle Routier . Paris: Stock, 1976, ISBN 2-234-00497-7 .
- The girls' orchestra in Auschwitz . Translation of Sigi Loritz. Munich: dtv, 1981 ISBN 978-3-423-13291-6 (first Röderberg-Verlag, 1980).
Web links
- Literature by and about Fania Fénelon in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Spiel um Zeit - Das Mädchenorchester in Auschwitz (Playing for Time) - American drama from 1980, in: [1] .
- ↑ Fania Fenelon: The girl orchestra in Auschwitz . 22nd edition 2016. dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-423-13291-4 , p. 384 (French: Sursis pour l'Orchestre . 1976. Translated by Sigi Loritz, p. 312. At the end of the third paragraph, Fania Fénelon wrote in reference to her "birthday party" in Birkenau concentration camp in 1944: "But I'm still so young , I'm twenty-five! "). See: Jegor Jublimov, Hofmann, Fénelon, in: Junge Welt, September 4, 2019, p. 10.
- ↑ Jegor Jublimov, Hofmann, Fénelon, in: Junge Welt, September 4, 2019, p. 10.
- ↑ The Girls Orchestra of Auschwitz in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ↑ The Auschwitz Women's Orchestra, in: Rheinische Post, September 18, 2006, see: [2]
- ↑ Unless otherwise stated: Jegor Jublimov, Hofmann, Fénelon, in: Junge Welt, September 4, 2019, p. 10.
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Fénelon, Fania |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Goldstein, Fania (maiden name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French chanson singer and Holocaust survivor |
DATE OF BIRTH | September 2, 1919 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Paris |
DATE OF DEATH | December 19, 1983 |
Place of death | Paris |