Girl orchestra of Auschwitz

The Girl Orchestra of Auschwitz was created in June 1943 on instruction of the SS by a Polish music teacher, Mrs. Tschaikowska. The members were prisoner girls, who were protected by the admission in the orchestra from being worked to death or gassed in the gas chamber.

The orchestra played at the gate, when the work gangs went out and when they returned.

During the final stages of the Holocaust, when the mass deportations of Jews from Eastern Europe occurred and large numbers of Jews were sent directly to the gas chambers, the orchestra played in order to put the minds of the victims at ease. The music preserved the illusion that the Jews were being transported "to the East" and allowed the SS to kill more effeciently. Fania Fénelon denies in her book the fact that the orchestra had to play to the specific selections and calls this a legend.

The history of the orchestra has been told in novels, documentations and films.

Members of the orchestra

• Esther Bejarano still plays today with the group of Coincidence. They play songs from the Ghetto and Jewish as well as anti-fascist songs
• Alma Rosé , Dirigentin and violinist
• Esther Bejarano , accordion
• Fania Fénelon
• Helena Dunicz Niwinska
• Zofia Cykowiak
• Anita Lasker Wallfisch , violoncello
• Hélène Scheps
• Violet Jacquet
• Flora Schrijver

Literature

• Fania Fénelon, the girl orchestra in Auschwitz
  :(auto+biographic novel)
  :ISBN 3423132914

• We live nevertheless, Esther Bejarano - on the girl orchestra in Auschwitz to the artist for the peace
  :Authors: Esther Bejarano Birgit gardner
  :ISBN 3891443536

• Alma Rosé, Vienna 1906
  :Authors: Richard Newman Karen Kirtley
  :Auschwitz 1944

• You are to inherit the truth: the Cellistin of Auschwitz; Memories Anita Lasker Wallfisch
  :Author: Anita Lasker Wallfisch
  :ISBN 3499226707

Media