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The Truth about Fania Fénelon and the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau

Author: Susan Eischeid

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-06-25

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 3319310380

This book explores how the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau has been remembered in both media and popular culture since the end of the Second World War. In particular it focuses on Fania Fenelon’s memoir, Playing for Time (1976), which was subsequently adapted into a film. Since then the publication has become a cornerstone of Holocaust remembrance and scholarship. Susan Eischeid therefore investigates whether it deserves such status, and whether such material can ever be considered reliable source material for historians. Using divergent source material gathered by the author, such as interviews with the other surviving members of the orchestra, this Pivot seeks to shed light on this period of women’s history, and questions how we remember the Holocaust today.

The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz

Author: Anne Sebba

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2025-03-27

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1399610767

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In 1943 a women's orchestra was formed at one of the most brutal death camps ever created on the order of German SS officers. Some forty-seven or so young girls who had been sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau from various countries, played in this hotch-potch band of hurriedly assembled instruments. For almost all of them it saved their lives. Although several other camps boasted male orchestras, there was no other female orchestra in any of the camps, prisons or ghettos created by the Nazis. It lasted for little over a year and at its height reached a high level of performance largely thanks to a strict rehearsal timetable of at least ten hours a day insisted on by its conductor, the Austrian violinist, Alma Rosé. In addition to playing when the workers went out in the morning and came back into the camp at the end of the day in a bizarre attempt to keep the weary prisoners in lock step as they tried to march in time to the music, they also performed at a concert at least once every Sunday. Occasionally they were summoned by Nazi officers to give individual performances of a favourite piece of music, purely as entertainment of a perverted kind, perhaps for a birthday. Here is one of the fundamental conundrums at the heart of this story; how was it possible that these most barbaric killers could apparently display genuine emotion on hearing such beautiful music? Even at its height the women's orchestra of Auschwitz was always something of a raggle-taggle mixture of amateurs, staying just one step ahead of their volatile oppressors. They were strengthened by having a few experienced musicians but everyone depended on each other, polished performers and relative beginners, all hoping in their weakened state they could play well enough together to stay alive until liberation. That most of them did reveals the extraordinary determination and reliance on female solidarity required to make the group successful. How and why was the orchestra formed, who were its members and what was its role in Nazi propaganda? Was it aimed at masking the atrocities in the camps or to provide solace to the perpetrators? What was the effect on those who owe their survival to being a part of this project and the inevitable compromises that were made? Can this possibly be described as complicity with the Nazis? These are just some of the tangled questions of deep moral complexity that Anne Sebba will examine as she tells the remarkable story of these women for the first time.

Forbidden Music

Author: Michael Haas

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-04-15

Total Pages: 505

ISBN-13: 0300154313

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DIV With National Socialism's arrival in Germany in 1933, Jews dominated music more than virtually any other sector, making it the most important cultural front in the Nazi fight for German identity. This groundbreaking book looks at the Jewish composers and musicians banned by the Third Reich and the consequences for music throughout the rest of the twentieth century. Because Jewish musicians and composers were, by 1933, the principal conveyors of Germanyâ€™s historic traditions and the ideals of German culture, the isolation, exile and persecution of Jewish musicians by the Nazis became an act of musical self-mutilation. Michael Haas looks at the actual contribution of Jewish composers in Germany and Austria before 1933, at their increasingly precarious position in Nazi Europe, their forced emigration before and during the war, their ambivalent relationships with their countries of refuge, such as Britain and the United States and their contributions within the radically changed post-war music environment. /div

Alma Rose

Author: Richard Newman

Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9781574670851

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Presents the story of a woman who saved the lives of many Jews who were members in her orchestra in Auschwitz.

The Violinist of Auschwitz

Author: Ellie Midwood

Publisher:

Published: 2023-06-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781538741146

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Based on the unforgettable true story of Alma Rosé, The Violinist of Auschwitz brings to life one of history's most fearless, inspiring and courageous heroines. Alma's bravery saved countless lives, bringing hope to those who had forgotten its meaning... In Auschwitz, every day is a fight for survival. Alma is inmate 50381, the number tattooed on her skin in pale blue ink. She is cooped up with thousands of others, torn from loved ones, trapped in a maze of barbed wire. Every day people disappear, never to be seen again. This tragic reality couldn't be further from Alma's previous life. An esteemed violinist, her performances left her audiences spellbound. But when the Nazis descend on Europe, none of that can save her... When the head of the women's camp appoints Alma as the conductor of the orchestra, performing for prisoners trudging to work as well as the highest-ranking Nazis, Alma refuses: "they can kill me but they won't make me play". Yet she soon realizes the power this position offers: she can provide starving girls with extra rations and save many from the clutches of death. This is how Alma meets Miklos, a talented pianist. Surrounded by despair, they find happiness in joint rehearsals, secret notes, and concerts they give side by side--all the while praying that this will one day end. But in Auschwitz, the very air is tainted with loss, and tragedy is the only certainty... In such a hopeless place, can their love survive?

Playing for Time

Author: Fania Fénelon

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 1997-09-01

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780815604945

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In 1943, Fania Fénelon was a Paris cabaret singer, a secret member of the Resistance, and a Jew. Captured by the Nazis, she was sent to Auschwitz, and later, Bergen-Belsen. With unnerving clarity and an astonishing ability to find humor where only despair should prevail, the author charts her eleven months as one of "the orchestra girls"; writes of the loves, the laughter, hatreds, jealousies, and tensions that racked this privileged group whose only hope of survival was to make music.

The Violinist of Auschwitz

Author: Jean-Jacques Felstein

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2021-12-22

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1399002821

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A son chronicles his Jewish mother’s real-life efforts to save as many young women as possible from the Auschwitz gas chambers during World War II. Arrested in 1943 and deported to Auschwitz, Elsa survived because she had the “opportunity” to join the women’s orchestra. But Elsa kept her story a secret, even from her own family. Indeed, her son would only discover what had happened to his mother many years later, after gradually unearthing her unbelievable story following her premature death, without ever having revealed her secret to anyone . . . Jean-Jacques Felstein was determined to reconstruct Elsa’s life in Birkenau, and would go in search of other orchestra survivors in Germany, Belgium, Poland, Israel, and the United States. The recollections of Hélène, first violin, Violette, third violin, Anita, a cellist, and other musicians, allowed him to rediscover his twenty-year-old mother, lost in the heart of hell. The story unfolds in two intersecting stages: one, contemporary, is that of the investigation, the other is that of Auschwitz and its unimaginable daily life, as told by the musicians. They describe the recitals on which their very survival depended, the incessant rehearsals, the departure in the mornings for the forced labourers to the rhythm of the instruments, the Sunday concerts, and how Mengele pointed out the pieces in the repertoire he wished to listen to in between “selections.” In this remarkable book, Jean-Jacques Felstein follows in his mother’s footsteps and by telling her story, attempts to free her, and himself, from the pain that had been hidden in their family for so long.

Angels at the Table

Author: Yvette Alt Miller

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2011-04-28

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1441110232

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Authoritative and personal, this is an introduction to all aspects of a traditional Jewish Shabbat, providing both an inspirational call to observe this weekly holiday and a comprehensive resource.

The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

Author: Lucy Adlington

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0063030942

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A powerful chronicle of the women who used their sewing skills to survive the Holocaust, stitching beautiful clothes at an extraordinary fashion workshop created within one of the most notorious WWII death camps. At the height of the Holocaust twenty-five young inmates of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp—mainly Jewish women and girls—were selected to design, cut, and sew beautiful fashions for elite Nazi women in a dedicated salon. It was work that they hoped would spare them from the gas chambers. This fashion workshop—called the Upper Tailoring Studio—was established by Hedwig Höss, the camp commandant’s wife, and patronized by the wives of SS guards and officers. Here, the dressmakers produced high-quality garments for SS social functions in Auschwitz, and for ladies from Nazi Berlin’s upper crust. Drawing on diverse sources—including interviews with the last surviving seamstress—The Dressmakers of Auschwitz follows the fates of these brave women. Their bonds of family and friendship not only helped them endure persecution, but also to play their part in camp resistance. Weaving the dressmakers’ remarkable experiences within the context of Nazi policies for plunder and exploitation, historian Lucy Adlington exposes the greed, cruelty, and hypocrisy of the Third Reich and offers a fresh look at a little-known chapter of World War II and the Holocaust.