Overview

‘An impressive, important, deeply moving book’ – Sarah Waters

In 1943, German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Using archival research and exclusive first-hand accounts, award-winning historian Anne Sebba examines how women and girls were drafted into a band which was forced to give weekly concerts to Nazi officers and play marching music to other inmates. It was a harrowing existence that, nonetheless, saved nearly all their lives. From conductor Alma Rosé, niece of Gustav Mahler, to the orchestra’s last surviving member, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Sebba unravels the astonishing tale of the musicians, and looks at the tangled moral questions the orchestra raises. What role could music play in a death camp? What was the effect on those women who owed their survival to their participation in a Nazi propaganda project? And how did it feel to be forced to provide solace to the perpetrators of a genocide that claimed the lives of their family and friends?

About Anne Sebba

Anne Sebba is the author of many critically acclaimed non-fiction books, mostly about iconic women who held power or influence in different ways, including the award-winning Les Parisiennes about women in wartime France. She has presented documentaries on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4 about musicians. Anne is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, Fellow of the Society of Authors and trustee of the National Archives Trust.

About Ealing Book Festival

The aim of Ealing Book Festival is to celebrate the joy of reading and to advance engagement and education around literature and reading. Through our events we hope to bring people and communities together; grow audiences for literature; inspire writers and readers of all ages; showcase well-known authors and promote local writers.

 www.ealingbookfestival.com.