Memoir of Holocaust Survivor and Cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch Published
The memoir of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a Holocaust survivor who escaped death at Auschwitz by joining the camp orchestra as a cellist, has been published. The book traces her family's persecution, deportation, survival, and later career in music in Britain.
The harrowing memoir of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a Holocaust survivor who escaped the gas chambers at Auschwitz by playing the cello in the camp orchestra, has been published under the title «Inherit the Truth». The book recounts her journey from a comfortable childhood in Germany to the horrors of Nazi persecution and her eventual new life in Britain.
Born into a family with a distinguished lawyer as a father, Lasker-Wallfisch opens her account with chatty family letters and the painful, futile efforts her parents made to arrange emigration from Germany during the 1930s. As the persecution of Jews intensified, her parents were deported in 1942, and her grandmother was also taken away. The late British historian Martin Gilbert writes in the book's preface that «the destination was unknown; they were never heard of again».
Still adolescents, Lasker-Wallfisch and her sister, Renate, planned to escape by train to France but were arrested. Released from prison in 1943, the author was sent to Auschwitz, where she survived by demonstrating her musical ability. Reflecting on the moment of her audition, she writes: «I would like to remind whoever may read this that I had not seen, let alone touched, a cello for nearly two years at the moment I am describing. I seem to remember that I played—or tried to play—the slow movement of the Boccherini Concerto. When I had finished, I sat down and joined the camp orchestra. There was no real danger of my not passing the audition, for up to the moment of my arrival the orchestra had not had a single bass instrument.»
In 1944, as the Red Army approached, she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where conditions were catastrophic. «Here people were starving,» she writes. «Here was typhus. Here was dirt, lice, no hygiene, no ambulance, no medicines. For fourteen days we stayed without bread. Rations were beets with water without salt.» Liberation arrived in 1945, which she describes as «the liberation we had hoped for for three years».
Initially denied entry to Britain, Lasker-Wallfisch eventually succeeded in immigrating. She went on to enjoy a long and successful career in music. Reflecting on her life, she writes: «I have never regretted for one moment that I came to England to start my new life. I have made my home here, and I have a great deal to be thankful for.»
The memoir stands as a testament to survival, the redemptive power of music, and the enduring human spirit in the face of unimaginable suffering. It offers readers a deeply personal perspective on one of history's darkest chapters, while also celebrating the resilience that allowed a young woman to rebuild her life far from the world that sought to destroy her.
