The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival by Anne Sebba

‘Superb and timely’ — KATE MOSSE

‘Impressive, important, deeply moving’ — SARAH WATERS

‘Brilliant’ — ANTHONY HOROWITZ

What role could music play in a death camp?

What did it mean for women whose survival depended on participating in a Nazi propaganda project?

And how did it feel to provide comfort to the very people responsible for the genocide that claimed the lives of their families and friends?

In 1943, SS officers at Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered the formation of a women’s orchestra. Almost fifty women and girls from eleven nations were assembled to play marching music for prisoners—forced labourers who left for work each morning and returned exhausted and broken each night—and to perform weekly concerts for Nazi officers. Some musicians were even summoned for private performances of an officer’s favourite piece.

It was the only entirely female orchestra in any Nazi camp. For almost all of the women chosen, membership meant survival.

In The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, award-winning historian Anne Sebba tells their astonishing story with sensitivity, depth, and care.

• Nazi Germany
• Auschwitz

ENG- English

• Hardcover