The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz
A Story of Survival
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The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz
Narrated by:
Anne Sebba, Helen Stern
Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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Anne Sebba
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Helen Stern
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By:
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Anne Sebba
About this listen
'Impressive, important, deeply moving' SARAH WATERS
'Brilliant' ANTHONY HOROWITZ
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?
In 1943, German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Almost fifty women and girls from eleven nations were assembled to play marching music to other inmates - forced labourers who left each morning and returned, exhausted and often broken, at the end of the day - and give weekly concerts for Nazi officers. Individual members were sometimes summoned to give solo performances of an officer's favourite piece of music. It was the only entirely female orchestra in any of the Nazi prison camps and, for almost all of the musicians chosen to take part, being in the orchestra was to save their lives. In The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, award-winning historian Anne Sebba tells their astonishing story with sensitivity and care.©2025 Anne Sebba
Critic Reviews
Impressive . . . Sebba's command of detail is superb. She quite rightly outlines the atrocities of the sadists, psychopaths and savages whom Auschwitz seemed to attract like a magnet; but also the resilience and courage of a group of women who refused to be beaten by evil, and used music to save their lives (Simon Heffer)
A wonderful achievement, truly superb. The horrific reality of Auschwitz emerges so clearly through the lens of this one orchestra and its extraordinary personalities. A vital contribution to the literature of the Shoah on the one hand, but also a book about art, about how wondrous things can bloom and grow in terrible places (STEPHEN FRY)
Deeply moving . . . This complex story pays fine tribute not only to the women's orchestra but also to their captive audiences, who remained as affected by the music as by the inhumanity that surrounded them (Clare Mulley)
Deeply affecting . . . What makes The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz so powerful is its unswerving commitment to detail. Sebba ensures that every woman's name, every story, is documented. This is not a faceless tragedy, it is a collection of individual lives, each deserving of remembrance (Olivia Lichtenstein)
Remarkable . . . deft . . . A vivid account of the experiences of the 40 or so women who briefly came together to make the music that saved their lives. Running through this fine book is Sebba's empathy for the impossible moral choices presented to these young women (Kathryn Hughes)
Meticulous research . . . a detailed picture of the orchestra's players. [A] remarkable story . . . The author has done these women proud (Caroline Moorehead)
A carefully layered and vividly compelling picture . . . The vile moral maze in which Auschwitz operated, and the shocking possibilities of a casual advantage, are brilliantly covered here, along with the fundamentals of the story
As a work of scholarship, it's a formidable achievement . . . Sebba doesn't judge individual motives. She presents conflicting perspectives even-handedly, and gives each of her subjects their own voice, even as she details - in unflinching clarity - the constant, often barely believable means by which their captors sought to strip them of their humanity
An extraordinary account of the musicians who literally played for their lives (Elisa Bray)
[A] harrowing and illuminating portrait of concentration camp life . . . Sebba writes without sensationalising. An indelible picture of this community of musicians and the ways in which they navigated the abject misery around them . . . scrupulously documented
Anne Sebba tells this harrowing story with tremendous rigour and care, capturing both the complex horror of the women's situation and the dignity and bravery with which they faced it. An impressive, important, deeply moving book (SARAH WATERS)
Raw truth
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