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A Story of Survival
by Anne Sebba
Moving and powerful, this is a vivid portrait of the women who came together to form an orchestra in order to survive the horrors of Auschwitz.
New York Times bestselling author of Les Parisiennes and That Woman: A Life of Wallis Simpson now examines how a disparate band of young girls struggled to overcome differences and little musical knowledge to please the often-sadistic Nazi overseers.
In 1943, German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra be formed among the female prisoners. Almost fifty women and girls from eleven nations were drafted into a band that would play in all weathers marching music to other inmates, forced laborers who left each morning and returned, exhausted and often broken, at the end of the day. While still living amid the harshest of circumstances, with little more than a bowl of soup to eat, they were also made to give weekly concerts for Nazi officers, and individual members were sometimes summoned to give solo performances. For almost all of the musicians chosen to take part, being in the orchestra saved their lives. But at what cost?
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? In The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, award-winning historian Anne Sebba traces these tangled questions of deep moral complexity with sensitivity and care.
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.
What’s the best nonfiction book you read in 2025?
Out of my top five, I'd say The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz by Anne Sebba gets first prize. Other favorites were: All The Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner Camera Girl by Carl Sferrazza Anthony The Jersey Brot...
-Diane_Jones
"Profoundly moving and rigorously researched Essential reading for anyone interested in Holocaust history, resilience, and the enduring human spirit." ―Library Journal (starred review)
"An important and heartbreaking contribution to Holocaust history." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Nuanced and unsettling... A chilling account of the sublime being twisted to inhumane ends." ―Publishers Weekly
"One of the most poignant stories to emerge from the horror of the death camps, it is beautifully told by Sebba with her customary sensitivity and eye for telling detail. A book you will never forget." ―Julia Boyd, Sunday Times bestselling author of Travellers in the Third Reich
"Anne Sebba brings meticulous research and brilliant writer's eye to one of the darkest questions of World War Two. What would you do to survive and what might be the price?" ―Anthony Horowitz, New York Times bestselling author of Close to Death
This information about The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Anne Sebba is a prize-winning biographer, lecturer, and former Reuters foreign correspondent who has written several books, including That Woman and Les Parisiennes. A former chair of Britain's Society of Authors and now on the Council, Anne is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. She lives in London.
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