Auschwitz Girls Orchestra

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The Auschwitz Girls Orchestra was a prisoner orchestra in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . The orchestra was put together by the Polish music teacher Zofia Czajkowska in June 1943 on the orders of the SS . As early as January 1941 there had been various male orchestras from Auschwitz .

General

The members were female prisoners who were saved from being exterminated by work and from death in the gas chambers by being accepted into the orchestra . The orchestra's conductor was Alma Rosé , the niece of the composer Gustav Mahler , from 1943 to April 1944 . The brutal and music-loving SS superintendent Maria Mandl , the unofficial director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau women's camp since October 1942, was a supporter of the orchestra. She supported the construction of a special barrack (camp section BI b in the immediate vicinity of the barbed wire fence) for the musicians. The block was numbered 12, from autumn 1943 number 7. In the barrack there was a floor lined with wooden planks and a stove to protect the musical instruments from moisture. Josef Kramer , who had been in command of the camp since May 1944 , wanted the work details to march in lockstep , accompanied by the girls' orchestra. An orchestra also worked well when SS greats visited the camp.

The musicians had to give private concerts again and again . For example, Josef Mengele , a classical music lover, had himself played more often. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch , a cellist, had to perform Schumann's Träumerei on a regular basis , because he loved listening to this piece. On a Sunday the orchestra had to perform with a Liliput circus. The little ones trusted the SS doctor, who joked with them and then took them to the gas chamber himself. Kramer also insisted on special events. Fania Fénelon described such a situation when a runner pushed open the door excitedly and shouted:

"Caution! Girl, quick! Commander Kramer is coming! Frozen in an impressive standstill, we await Kramer. He enters, accompanied by two SS officers ... He walks over to the chairs set up for this purpose, sits down, takes off his peaked cap and puts it down next to him ... Still standing still, as it should be when you are with an officer speaks, Alma asks anxiously: What does the camp leader want to hear? - The Reverie of Schumann . And he adds very soulfully: This is an admirable piece, it goes to the heart. ... The camp leader lifts his head in a relaxed manner and says: How beautiful, how exciting! "

- Fénelon, p. 138 ff

Time and again, many musicians fell ill with diarrhea , edema , tuberculosis , typhus , typhus , diphtheria , malaria, etc. If the disease was not very contagious, the patient was not transferred to the prisoner infirmary. If a musician was admitted to the infirmary, she was mostly spared from the selections of the SS.

The history of the orchestra was processed in novels, documentaries and films as well as an opera.

Assignments of the orchestra

Entry and exit

The orchestra played at the gate when the work columns marched in and out. In the summer the work gangs moved out between 5 and 6 a.m. and came back around 8 p.m. In the winter they marched out between 7 and 8 a.m. and came back around 5 p.m.

Legend: At the ramp

  • Claim (source: Esther Bejarano ): Even if the deportation trains with Jewish people from all over Europe arrived, the orchestra had to play. The newcomers were to be lulled into safety so that they would go to their death in the nearby gas chambers without suspicion and without a fight. While transports arrived, however, there was usually a block lock for the entire camp.
  • Fania Fénelon denies in her book that the orchestra had to play for the selections and calls this a legend.
  • Also Anita Lasker-Wallfisch rejects the allegation that the orchestra had to play at the ramp. However, since the block in which the orchestra was housed was close to the tracks, it is plausible that those arriving heard the orchestra rehearsing.
  • Fania Fénelon's book says: “The block has been closed since dawn. All doors in the warehouse have been locked for five hours, even here. Only the door of the music hall can remain open. Can the people on the trains hear our music? Probably scraps of a melody every now and then, sometimes they look over at us. "

Sunday concerts

Concerts for the SS men were given in various places on Sundays.

ensemble

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch (2007)
Esther Bejarano (2018)

Conductors

  • 1. Zofia Czajkowska is pronounced "Tchaikowska" Polin, violin, interpretation, it has to be a descendant of the composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky spent
  • 2. Alma Rosé , violin virtuoso, Austrian, daughter of the Jewish concertmaster at the Viennese court opera Arnold Rosé and niece of the conductor and composer Gustav Mahler
  • 3. Sonia Vinogradovna, piano, (non-Jewish) Russian

Other members

reception

Movie

  • Playing for Time - The Girls' Orchestra in Auschwitz , feature film USA 1980, with Vanessa Redgrave as Fania Fénelon
  • Esther Béjarano and the Auschwitz Girls' Orchestra , film by Christel Priemer 1992

radio play

Opera

literature

  • Fania Fénelon: The Girls Orchestra in Auschwitz, Munich, 2008, 20th edition , ISBN 9783423132916 (autobiographical novel).
  • Esther Béjarano / Birgit Gärtner: We live anyway, Esther Béjarano - from girls' orchestra in Auschwitz to artist for peace , ISBN 3891443536 .
  • Richard Newman / Karen Kirtley: Alma Rosé, Vienna 1906 - Auschwitz 1944
  • Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: You should inherit the truth - The Cellist of Auschwitz - Memories , ISBN 3499226707 .
  • Gerlinde Haas: Obey in order to survive
  • Margita Schwalbova: Eleven women in truth
  • Jean-Jacques Felstein: Dans l'orchestre d'Auschwitz - Le secret de ma mère , ISBN 978-2849520949 .
  • Bruno Giner: Survivre et mourir en musique dans les camps nazis , Berg international, ISBN 978-2917191392 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fénelon p. 304 ff.
  2. ^ Statement by Anita Lasker-Wallfisch during a conversation in Traun on September 29, 2007.
  3. ↑ Fania Fenelon: The girl orchestra in Auschwitz . P. 273.
  4. ↑ Bach and Schumann for the SS. In: FAZ.net . January 30, 2014, accessed December 17, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Germany: One of the last survivors of the Auschwitz orchestra died. In: zeit.de. January 30, 2014, accessed December 17, 2014 .
  6. ↑ cf. Werner Grossert: Carla and Sylvia Wagenberg - Two Dessau Jewish girls in the "girls' orchestra" of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp , special issue of the Dessau Chronicle, Dessau 2007.
  7. ^ The Wooden Shoes in the ARD audio play database
  8. ↑ Press release on January 31, 2003 radiobremen.de