Women’s survival in wartime

Anne Sebba in conversation with Daniel Hahn

Henley town hall

Monday, October 6

ANNE Sebba, author of The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival, began her presentation in front of a capacity audience in the town hall by showing a moving PowerPoint presentation of many of the members of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the concentration camps in Poland. She explained that actual photographs of events during the dreadful years of the Second World war were impossible to obtain, but that her meticulous research had identified many of the women involved and she showed numerous photographs of them in their ordinary lives before the war had started.

She explained that there had been more than
50 women involved with the orchestra, which had been created by Nazi camp commanders, initially to provide marching music so inmates could march to and from their place of work.

Later on, there was a requirement to provide high-quality musical concerts to entertain the German guards, despite their brutality towards these desperately unfortunate inmates.

Anne quickly identified that the women’s motivation to join the orchestra was simply one of survival, because their choice otherwise was to face immediate death. Story after story was told of young women and their families being separated upon arrival into two lines: one for old (over 40), young and infirm who would be led immediately to the gas chambers. The other line was for those classed as fit for work, to be showered, deloused and have all their hair cut off. Their nationalities included Hungarian, Greek, Polish and Dutch in addition to Jews from Germany.

While Anne was at pains to give full justice to all the members of the orchestra, she highlighted the prominent role of Alma Rosé, niece of composer Gustav Mahler, who was deported to Auschwitz, where she conducted the women’s orchestra before dying of a sudden illness in 1944. Alma was an inspiration, ensuring that the orchestra performed to a high standard, while attempting to save as many lives as possible.

Maria Mandl, or Mandel, was a notorious sadistic camp guard who was in charge of the orchestra, acting brutally to any women disobeying her orders, but also basking in the success they achieved.

Anne invited the audience to reflect on how all these characters managed to work as a team to produce such wonderful music, amid the horror of their situation.

Upon inviting questions from the audience, consternation occurred when an old lady sitting on the front row, adjacent to the reviewer, suddenly took the microphone to say that her family had experienced similar atrocities and that she endorsed Anne’s presentation as a true representation of the dreadful events from the war.

Waves of emotion understandably took hold of all concerned for a little while until normal questions were able to continue.

Upon the audience leaving the venue, spilling into the bright sunshine where people were happily eating and drinking in the Henley market square, one member commented that we were luckily returning to a completely different world than that of the horrors that we had just heard about.

Thank you to Anne Sebba for telling a remarkable story that must be told.

Terry Grourk