Fania Fénelon

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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

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Spiel um Zeit - Das Mädchenorchester in Auschwitz (Playing for Time) - American drama from 1980, in: [1] .
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ Jegor Jublimov, Hofmann, Fénelon, in: Junge Welt, September 4, 2019, p. 10.
  4. ↑ The Girls Orchestra of Auschwitz in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  5. ↑ The Auschwitz Women's Orchestra, in: Rheinische Post, September 18, 2006, see: [2]
  6. ↑ 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