The ACF London is delighted to welcome acclaimed historian and biographer Anne Sebba for a special evening celebrating her latest publication The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz - A Story of Survival.
This event will feature an introduction to the orchestra, whose main conductor was the Viennese-born Alma Rosé, and a discussion with Anne Sebba and award-winning journalist Rosie Goldsmith, followed by a Q&A.
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 drafted into a hurriedly assembled band that would play marching music to other inmates, forced labourers who left each morning and returned, exhausted and often broken, at the end of the day. While still living amid the most brutal and dehumanising of circumstances, they were also made to give weekly concerts for Nazi officers, and 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 saved their lives. 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?
From Alma Rosé, the orchestra's main conductor, niece of Gustav Mahler and a formidable pre-war celebrity violinist, to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, its teenage cellist and last surviving member, Sebba draws on meticulous archival research and exclusive first-hand accounts to tell the full and astonishing story of the orchestra, its members and the response of other prisoners for the first time.
Anne Sebba is a historian and an award-winning biographer who began her career as a Reuters correspondent based in London and Rome. She has written eleven works of non-fiction, mostly about iconic 20th century women, translated into a variety of languages including French, Polish, Czech, Japanese and Chinese, makes regular television and radio appearances and has presented two BBC radio documentaries about musicians. She is the author of the international bestseller That Woman, an acclaimed biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, and the prize-winning Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died Under Nazi Occupation. Her most recent book was Ethel Rosenberg, the Short Life and Great Betrayal of an American Wife and Mother, shortlisted for the Wingate award. Anne is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research and trustee of the National Archives Trust.
Rosie Goldsmith is an award-winning journalist specializing in arts and foreign affairs. A BBC staff Senior Broadcast Journalist for twenty years, she travelled the world and presented several flagship programmes. Today she combines journalism with chairing and curating arts and literary events in the UK and across the world. Known also as a champion of international literature, translation and language learning, she promotes them whenever she can. She is Founder and Director of the European Literature Network, Editor-in-Chief of The Riveter magazine, Artistic Director of the European Writers’ Festival and was Chair of the Judges of the EBRD Literature Prize 2018-2020, a prize that she helped set up. She is presenter of the Slightly Foxed books podcast.
