99-Year-Old On How "Playing The Cello" Saved Her Life At Nazi Death Camp

A 99-year-old Holocaust survivor has reflected on her life as the last living member of the women's orchestra at Auschwitz. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch's story is not just about survival but also about the power of music in the middle of unimaginable horror. She was taken to Auschwitz as a teenager in 1943 after being arrested for attempting to escape Nazi Germany. 

She recalled, "When I arrived at the camp, I was asked if I played any instruments. A chance mention of playing the cello saved my life." She joined one of the camp's fourteen orchestras, where music became both her refuge and her prison.

In BBC Two's documentary The Last Musician of Auschwitz, Ms Lasker-Wallfisch shares her unique experience of playing music in a place filled with the pain of losing loved ones and not knowing whether you stood a chance against the Nazis.

Music was played to accompany the most terrible things, including the moments children entered the gas chambers, she said. The orchestra was forced to perform for notorious figures such as Dr Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death," who conducted cruel medical experiments, especially on twins and people with disabilities, leading to severe suffering, mutilation, and death. For Ms Lasker-Wallfisch, playing music under duress was not just an artistic act; it was a desperate means of survival.

Her connection to music stretches beyond her role in the orchestra. Growing up in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), she was encouraged by her family to pursue music as an escape from rising anti-Semitic violence. Despite the growing Nazi threat, she remembered, "We were the typical assimilated German-Jewish family. We went to a little private school, and I suddenly heard, 'Don't give the Jew the sponge,' and I thought, 'What is all this?'"

The war turned her life upside down when, in 1942, she was separated from her parents, who were deported. She recalled the terror she felt upon being sent to a concentration camp in Auschwitz, "You had no idea where you were. Noisy with the dogs, people screaming, a horrible smell... You'd arrived in hell, really."

Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was tattooed and shaved by fellow prisoners, who were eager for any news about the war. She recalled, "I said, 'Look, I can't tell you too much because I've been in prison for a long time,' and casually mentioned that I played the cello." The girl who heard this responded, "Oh, that is very good. You might be saved."

Ms Lasker-Wallfisch, bald, naked and with a number tattooed on her arm, found herself in this strange conversation. The camp orchestra needed a cellist, and she was chosen to join. She became part of the Women's Orchestra, led by Alma Rose, a violinist connected to the renowned composer Gustav Mahler. "[Alma] succeeded in making us so worried about what we were going to play and whether we were playing well that we temporarily didn't worry about what was going to happen to us," Ms Lasker-Wallfisch recalled.

The orchestra, which performed military music for the camp's soldiers and workers, was a double-edged sword. For Ms Lasker-Wallfisch, it was a survival mechanism.

She also spoke about the role of Ms Rose, whose leadership saved many lives in the orchestra. "We owe our lives to Alma. She had a dignity which imposed itself even on the Germans," she explained. "Even the Germans treated her as if she were a member of the human race."

The orchestra was a temporary escape from the horrors surrounding them, but it ended when the women were moved to the Belsen camp in 1944, where conditions worsened. 

The final chapter of Ms Lasker-Wallfisch's war journey came with the liberation of Belsen in April 1945, when British troops arrived just in time to save her life. "I think another week and we probably wouldn't have made it because there was no food and no water left," she recalled.

After the war, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch rebuilt her life, initially settling in Britain. She later married and became a founding member of the English Chamber Orchestra.

She had vowed never to set foot on German soil, fearing that someone there could have been "the very person who murdered my parents." But over time, her perspective changed. In 2018, she spoke to German politicians in the Bundestag, saying, "As you see, I broke my oath - many, many years ago - and I have no regrets. It's quite simple: hate is poison and, ultimately, you poison yourself."