Download or read book The Truth about Fania F nelon and the Women s Orchestra of Auschwitz Birkenau written by Susan Eischeid and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-25 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau has been remembered in both media and popular culture since the end of the Second World War. In particular it focuses on Fania Fenelon’s memoir, Playing for Time (1976), which was subsequently adapted into a film. Since then the publication has become a cornerstone of Holocaust remembrance and scholarship. Susan Eischeid therefore investigates whether it deserves such status, and whether such material can ever be considered reliable source material for historians. Using divergent source material gathered by the author, such as interviews with the other surviving members of the orchestra, this Pivot seeks to shed light on this period of women’s history, and questions how we remember the Holocaust today.

Download or read book Forbidden Music written by Michael Haas and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIV With National Socialism's arrival in Germany in 1933, Jews dominated music more than virtually any other sector, making it the most important cultural front in the Nazi fight for German identity. This groundbreaking book looks at the Jewish composers and musicians banned by the Third Reich and the consequences for music throughout the rest of the twentieth century. Because Jewish musicians and composers were, by 1933, the principal conveyors of Germany’s historic traditions and the ideals of German culture, the isolation, exile and persecution of Jewish musicians by the Nazis became an act of musical self-mutilation. Michael Haas looks at the actual contribution of Jewish composers in Germany and Austria before 1933, at their increasingly precarious position in Nazi Europe, their forced emigration before and during the war, their ambivalent relationships with their countries of refuge, such as Britain and the United States and their contributions within the radically changed post-war music environment. /div

Download or read book Alma Rose written by Richard Newman and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2003 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the story of a woman who saved the lives of many Jews who were members in her orchestra in Auschwitz.

Download or read book The Violinist of Auschwitz written by Jean-Jacques Felstein and published by Pen and Sword History. This book was released on 2021-12-22 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A son chronicles his Jewish mother’s real-life efforts to save as many young women as possible from the Auschwitz gas chambers during World War II. Arrested in 1943 and deported to Auschwitz, Elsa survived because she had the “opportunity” to join the women’s orchestra. But Elsa kept her story a secret, even from her own family. Indeed, her son would only discover what had happened to his mother many years later, after gradually unearthing her unbelievable story following her premature death, without ever having revealed her secret to anyone . . . Jean-Jacques Felstein was determined to reconstruct Elsa’s life in Birkenau, and would go in search of other orchestra survivors in Germany, Belgium, Poland, Israel, and the United States. The recollections of Hélène, first violin, Violette, third violin, Anita, a cellist, and other musicians, allowed him to rediscover his twenty-year-old mother, lost in the heart of hell. The story unfolds in two intersecting stages: one, contemporary, is that of the investigation, the other is that of Auschwitz and its unimaginable daily life, as told by the musicians. They describe the recitals on which their very survival depended, the incessant rehearsals, the departure in the mornings for the forced labourers to the rhythm of the instruments, the Sunday concerts, and how Mengele pointed out the pieces in the repertoire he wished to listen to in between “selections.” In this remarkable book, Jean-Jacques Felstein follows in his mother’s footsteps and by telling her story, attempts to free her, and himself, from the pain that had been hidden in their family for so long.

Download or read book The Violinist of Auschwitz written by Ellie Midwood and published by . This book was released on 2025-04-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Playing for Time written by Fania Fénelon and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1997-09-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1943, Fania Fénelon was a Paris cabaret singer, a secret member of the Resistance, and a Jew. Captured by the Nazis, she was sent to Auschwitz, and later, Bergen-Belsen. With unnerving clarity and an astonishing ability to find humor where only despair should prevail, the author charts her eleven months as one of "the orchestra girls"; writes of the loves, the laughter, hatreds, jealousies, and tensions that racked this privileged group whose only hope of survival was to make music.

Download or read book The Sound of Hope written by Kellie D. Brown and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since ancient times, music has demonstrated the incomparable ability to touch and resonate with the human spirit as a tool for communication, emotional expression, and as a medium of cultural identity. During World War II, Nazi leadership recognized the power of music and chose to harness it with malevolence, using its power to push their own agenda and systematically stripping it away from the Jewish people and other populations they sought to disempower. But music also emerged as a counterpoint to this hate, withstanding Nazi attempts to exploit or silence it. Artistic expression triumphed under oppressive regimes elsewhere as well, including the horrific siege of Leningrad and in Japanese internment camps in the Pacific. The oppressed stubbornly clung to music, wherever and however they could, to preserve their culture, to uplift the human spirit and to triumph over oppression, even amid incredible tragedy and suffering. This volume draws together the musical connections and individual stories from this tragic time through scholarly literature, diaries, letters, memoirs, compositions, and art pieces. Collectively, they bear witness to the power of music and offer a reminder to humanity of the imperative each faces to not only remember, but to prevent another such cataclysm.

Download or read book The Women s Orchestra of Auschwitz written by Anne Sebba and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2025-03-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1943 a women's orchestra was formed at one of the most brutal death camps ever created on the order of German SS officers. Some forty-seven or so young girls who had been sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau from various countries, played in this hotch-potch band of hurriedly assembled instruments. For almost all of them it saved their lives. Although several other camps boasted male orchestras, there was no other female orchestra in any of the camps, prisons or ghettos created by the Nazis. It lasted for little over a year and at its height reached a high level of performance largely thanks to a strict rehearsal timetable of at least ten hours a day insisted on by its conductor, the Austrian violinist, Alma Rosé. In addition to playing when the workers went out in the morning and came back into the camp at the end of the day in a bizarre attempt to keep the weary prisoners in lock step as they tried to march in time to the music, they also performed at a concert at least once every Sunday. Occasionally they were summoned by Nazi officers to give individual performances of a favourite piece of music, purely as entertainment of a perverted kind, perhaps for a birthday. Here is one of the fundamental conundrums at the heart of this story; how was it possible that these most barbaric killers could apparently display genuine emotion on hearing such beautiful music? Even at its height the women's orchestra of Auschwitz was always something of a raggle-taggle mixture of amateurs, staying just one step ahead of their volatile oppressors. They were strengthened by having a few experienced musicians but everyone depended on each other, polished performers and relative beginners, all hoping in their weakened state they could play well enough together to stay alive until liberation. That most of them did reveals the extraordinary determination and reliance on female solidarity required to make the group successful. How and why was the orchestra formed, who were its members and what was its role in Nazi propaganda? Was it aimed at masking the atrocities in the camps or to provide solace to the perpetrators? What was the effect on those who owe their survival to being a part of this project and the inevitable compromises that were made? Can this possibly be described as complicity with the Nazis? These are just some of the tangled questions of deep moral complexity that Anne Sebba will examine as she tells the remarkable story of these women for the first time.

Download or read book Angels at the Table written by Yvette Alt Miller and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-04-28 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authoritative and personal, this is an introduction to all aspects of a traditional Jewish Shabbat, providing both an inspirational call to observe this weekly holiday and a comprehensive resource.

Download or read book Inherit the Truth written by Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-04-22 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an effort to recount to her children the terrible odyssey of her ordeal in a Nazi concentration camp, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch has drawn from her family's letters and her own vivid memories. The result is a stunning and quietly devastating story of survival.

Download or read book Crying is Forbidden Here written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book We Wept Without Tears written by Gideon Greif and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "Sonderkommando of "Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted primarily of Jewish prisoners forced by the Germans to facilitate the mass extermination. Though never involved in the killing itself, they were compelled to be "members of staff" of the Nazi death-factory. This book, translated for the first time into English from its original Hebrew, consists of interviews with the very few surviving men who witnessed at first hand the unparalleled horror of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Some of these men had never spoken of their experiences before.

Download or read book Playing for Time written by Arthur Miller and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary story of the women's orchestra in Auschwitz, originally filmed for television with Vanessa Redgrave, and adapted for the stage by Miller himself. Fania Fénelon, a Parisian singer, is arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. There, she finds herself swept into the orchestra, composed entirely of female prisoners and founded as entertainment for the camp commandants. As long as the orchestra continues to find favour, its members will be spared the gas chambers. But Fania is struggling with the corruption of what she holds most sacred in the world - her music - and the morals of the orchestra members are being ground down every day. They are, quite literally, playing for time. Arthur Miller's stageplay Playing for Time is adapted from the 1980 CBS television film, written by Miller himself, and based on acclaimed musician Fania Fénelon's autobiography The Musicians of Auschwitz. The television film starred Vanessa Redgrave as Fénelon. The stageplay was first staged at 1-Act Theatre, San Francisco, in 1985.

Download or read book What the Night Sings written by Vesper Stamper and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Morris Award Finalist Longlisted for the National Book Award For fans of The Book Thief and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas comes a lushly illustrated novel about a teen Holocaust survivor who must come to terms with who she is and how to rebuild her life. "A tour de force. This powerful story of love, loss, and survival is not to be missed." --KRISTIN HANNAH, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale After losing her family and everything she knew in the Nazi concentration camps, Gerta is finally liberated, only to find herself completely alone. Without her papa, her music, or even her true identity, she must move past the task of surviving and on to living her life. In the displaced persons camp where she is staying, Gerta meets Lev, a fellow teen survivor who she just might be falling for, despite her feelings for someone else. With a newfound Jewish identity she never knew she had, and a return to the life of music she thought she lost forever, Gerta must choose how to build a new future. "What the Night Sings is a book from the heart, of the heart, and to the heart. Vesper Stamper's Gerta will stay with you long after you turn the last page. Her story is one of hope and redemption and life--a blessing to the world." --Deborah Heiligman, award-winning author of Charles and Emma and Vincent and Theo A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST CHILDREN'S BOOK OF 2018 A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF 2018

Download or read book The Wrong Boy written by Suzy Zail and published by Walker Books Australia. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Being kissed by Karl Jager was devastating. And beautiful. War makes you do dangerous things.” Hanna Mendel liked to know what was going to happen next. She was going to be a famous concert pianist. She was going to wear her yellow dress to the dance on Saturday night. But she didn’t plan on her street being turned into a ghetto. She didn’t plan on being rounded up and thrown in a cattle truck. She didn’t plan on spending her sixteenth birthday in Auschwitz, in a wooden barrack with 200 other prisoners. Most of all, Hanna didn’t plan on falling in love with the wrong boy. What happens when a Jewish girl falls in love with the German son of the camp commander? Award-winning Australian author Suzy Zail’s young adult fiction book, The Wrong Boy, paints a story of identity, romance, hate and loyalty alongside the historical backdrop of the Holocaust. This gripping novel about a teenage girl coming to terms with first love amid the confronting realities of a war-torn world will leave readers wanting more. Short-listed in the Older Reader’s category of the 2013 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards “A compelling picture of life in a prison camp from the point of view of a determined but naïve teenage girl. Recommended.” – Aussie Reviews “Four stars … From its opening page, the reader will feel empathy and heartache for those who suffered during this violent era.” – Read Plus “A roller-coaster ride … This is a must read for any teenager or adult interested in the past, the tragedy of war or what happens when humans believe they are superior.” – Kids Book Review “Compelling reading … Zail uses a deft hand.” – Buzz Words magazine “An addictive read, well-written and, in spite of the horrow, warm-hearted.” – ­Around the Bookshops

Download or read book Giants written by Yehuda Koren and published by . This book was released on 2013-12-18 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this account of the Ovitz family, seven of whose ten members were dwarves, readers bear witness to the terrible irony of the Ovitzs' fate: being burdened with dwarfism helped them to endure the Holocaust. Through research and interviews with the youngest Ovitz daughter, Perla, the troupe's last surviving member, and other relatives, the authors weave the tale of a beloved and successful family of performers who were famous entertainers in Central Europe until the Nazis deported them to Auschwitz in May 1944.

Download or read book The Choice written by Edith Eva Eger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller “I’ll be forever changed by Dr. Eger’s story…The Choice is a reminder of what courage looks like in the worst of times and that we all have the ability to pay attention to what we’ve lost, or to pay attention to what we still have.”—Oprah “Dr. Eger’s life reveals our capacity to transcend even the greatest of horrors and to use that suffering for the benefit of others. She has found true freedom and forgiveness and shows us how we can as well.” —Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate “Dr. Edith Eva Eger is my kind of hero. She survived unspeakable horrors and brutality; but rather than let her painful past destroy her, she chose to transform it into a powerful gift—one she uses to help others heal.” —Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle Winner of the National Jewish Book Award and Christopher Award At the age of sixteen, Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. Hours after her parents were killed, Nazi officer Dr. Josef Mengele, forced Edie to dance for his amusement and her survival. Edie was pulled from a pile of corpses when the American troops liberated the camps in 1945. Edie spent decades struggling with flashbacks and survivor’s guilt, determined to stay silent and hide from the past. Thirty-five years after the war ended, she returned to Auschwitz and was finally able to fully heal and forgive the one person she’d been unable to forgive—herself. Edie weaves her remarkable personal journey with the moving stories of those she has helped heal. She explores how we can be imprisoned in our own minds and shows us how to find the key to freedom. The Choice is a life-changing book that will provide hope and comfort to generations of readers.