Anne Sebba | The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival
Recorded: Sat 26 Apr 2025
Duration: 1 hr
Anne Sebba | The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival
Spring 2025
In The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, prize-winning biographer Anne Sebba unveils the astonishing and complex story of the female prisoners who were forced to play music for both fellow inmates and Nazi officers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1943, the German SS officers ordered the formation of an all-female orchestra made up of nearly fifty women from eleven nations. While enduring the unimaginable horrors of the camp, these women were coerced into performing weekly concerts for Nazi officers and playing music for marching prisoners.
Through meticulous archival research and exclusive first-hand accounts, Sebba tells the stories of these musicians, including the orchestra’s formidable conductor Alma Rosé, niece of Gustav Mahler, and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the teenage cellist and last surviving member. As we mark the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, this sensitive and thought-provoking account illuminates the haunting legacy of the orchestra and the moral dilemmas faced by its members.
In conversation with Midge Gillies
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