THE WOMEN'S ORCHESTRA OF AUSCHWITZ
by the Shoah Foundation. Crucially, she tells the story not only of the players, but also of their audience of fellow prisoners. “How could we play light music here, against the background of the flames and black smoke that billowed day and night from the crematoria chimneys?” reflects one survivor. The author leaves open the question of whether the music helped prisoners or intensified their suffering. She makes clear, however, that the orchestra did not play during the “selection” of poor souls sent to the gas chambers. The players’ musical skills saved at least their own lives, exempt from the work squads, though they themselves were exhausted and starving, and Jewish orchestra members were always vulnerable to “selection” for gassing. Their resident block was mere meters from a crematorium, and human ashes settled inside some of their instruments. They experienced the “scandal of music at Auschwitz on a daily basis,” as the Nazis’ abuse of music was itself “a form of torture.” Their playing was an “effort to claw back something of what it meant to be human.”"
Based on 179 Goodreads ratings
Book Details
Reading Info
About This Book
This nonfiction account follows women forced to perform music for the people running Auschwitz, built from historical research and survivor testimony rather than invented scenes. It doesn't soften th...
Our Review
This nonfiction account follows women forced to perform music for the people running Auschwitz, built from historical research and survivor testimony rather than invented scenes. It doesn't soften the setting to make for easier reading, but it is written for teens rather than adult Holocaust scholars, which shows in how it paces the horror against moments where the musicians hold onto pieces of their own humanity through their playing. At 305 pages and pitched to ages 12 to 18, it's a substantial read, closer to a serious, research-backed history than a quick survey of the period.
Where it earns its place on a teen nonfiction shelf is the moral complexity it's willing to sit with instead of resolving neatly: these musicians played for their captors while also finding ways to protect and comfort fellow prisoners, and the book doesn't pretend that was a simple position to have been in. For a student researching World War II or the Holocaust through the specific lens of art and survival, this offers a documented, specific case rather than a general overview. It holds a 4.2 average on Goodreads from a modest but consistent base of raters, the kind of quiet, steady rating a well-sourced piece of history nonfiction tends to earn.
You Might Also Like
Looking for more books?
Visit our sister site BooksbyOrder.com