{"id":11053,"date":"2025-12-17T09:16:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T09:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thehistoryreader.com\/?p=11053"},"modified":"2025-12-16T18:27:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T18:27:52","slug":"featured-excerpt-the-womens-orchestra-of-auschwitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thehistoryreader.com\/historical-figures\/featured-excerpt-the-womens-orchestra-of-auschwitz\/","title":{"rendered":"Featured Excerpt: The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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by Anne Sebba<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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An instant USA Today<\/em> bestseller, The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz<\/em> by Anne Sebba is a vivid portrait of the disparate women who came together to form an orchestra in order to survive the horrors of Auschwitz. Read on for a featured excerpt!
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\"Auschwitz
Auschwitz’s main gate, bearing the motto “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work makes one free). Public domain. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

The success of the men\u2019s orchestra, smaller than the big symphony orchestra in Auschwitz I and known as the <\/span>Lagerkapelle<\/span><\/i> (or camp chamber ensemble) under Laks\u2019s direction, was likely a major source of inspiration for Maria Mandl\u2019s idea to develop a women\u2019s orchestra. The Laks orchestra played in the men\u2019s sector of Birkenau, known as B1b, and Mandl proposed that the women\u2019s orchestra should be housed in a separate but nearby section known as B1a, which would similarly play marches for the female prisoners going out to work.<\/span><\/p>

\u201cI had to organize the orchestra under Mandl,\u201d Helen \u201cZippi\u201d Spitzer said in an interview in 2000, adding that \u201cshe noticed I\u2019m an artist and a musician.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Zippi\u2019s comments are an interesting indication of the degree to which she had ingratiated herself with Mandl. She had a sure instinct of how best to survive the Nazi extermination system, deploying every aspect of her varied background and wide-ranging abilities to make herself indispensable to Mandl, who had the power of life and death over all the women prisoners. \u201cEven she did not understand the system,\u201d Zippi said of Mandl. \u201cShe wanted results. If she asked for 18 or 20 diagrams for Berlin she couldn\u2019t care less when I did it, how I did it, as long as it was done.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Once, when Zippi was ill with stomach cramps, she needed to lie on her bunk bed until they passed, a serious infringement of camp rules. Mandl found her there, but, instead of punishing Zippi, the normally brutal guard simply touched her gently on the forehead in a motherly way and allowed her to remain. \u201cShe knew I did my job and delivered and worked during the night sometimes. So I could have the day free,\u201d Zippi explained in the same interview. \u201cSome kommandos were protected…I didn\u2019t investigate how I knew it. I just did.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

As soon as Mandl discussed her orchestra project, Zippi realized that her claim to be a \u201cmusician,\u201d even though she could only play the mandolin to a basic level, would create further dependence. And in this way the ring of mutual manipulation tightened.<\/span><\/p>

\"The
All that remains today of Block 12, the musicians\u2019 block, with the central pile of bricks that once provided a stove. Photo courtesy of Anne Sebba.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

However, establishing an all-female orchestra was bound to be complicated, especially since the decision was not up to Mandl alone. First, she had to clear the project with a senior male SS camp official. In early 1943 she approached Paul M\u00fcller, camp director and number two to the commandant, who, fortunately for her, saw there were advantages as it simplified counting the rows of prisoners marching to work and made the imposition of faux military discipline easier. He agreed to help her with the paperwork that was necessary to propose the project to Rudolf H\u00f6ss, overall commandant of the camp.<\/span><\/p>

Zippi\u2019s role in helping Mandl set up the women\u2019s orchestra was in fact rather more ambiguous than she made it sound. Although Zippi explained that she had already been \u201cvery creative\u201d in the camp drawing office and so now grabbed \u201cthe chance to talk about music and artistic things,\u201d she nonetheless said that Mandl had initially turned to Katya Singer<\/a>, a fellow Slovak Zippi had befriended on the journey to Auschwitz, for help with this venture and it was Katya who then approached Zippi. \u201cThe camp hierarchy wanted Katya, because she was the top administrative inmate at this time, to go with them to Auschwitz I and make contact with the men there partly to get instruments and partly to discuss procedures…But Katya did not understand music so she suggested I go in her place. So that was the beginning.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Katya did not speak about the origins of the orchestra in her one known interview but spoke highly of Zippi as her assistant. \u201cZippi never did anything harmful to anyone. She was always straightforward with me.\u201d In an earlier interview in 1983, Zippi described the origins of the orchestra slightly differently, omitting Katya\u2019s initial role.<\/span><\/p>

\u201c[Mandl] was coming to our camp office and started to discuss how to go about it…we promised her we\u2019d get professional musicians from the card index and if not we\u2019d make inquiries.\u201d Zippi was clearly keen to be involved: \u201cI wanted the contact with the men,\u201d she said, claiming later that she thought they would be a useful source of information for any resistance activities. She thus asked for permission to be included in the group that went to the men\u2019s camp in Auschwitz I \u201cto see how they did it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

Zippi provided a slightly different version in 1982 of how the women\u2019s orchestra began. \u201cWe wanted to see how the men functioned,\u201d she said. \u201cI had a dual role working with and reporting to Katya Singer on the negotiations with the men\u2019s orchestra. They agreed to supply us with violins and all the necessary instruments in abundance. They had their own and there were thousands of instruments from all over Europe from deportees…even the sheet music they brought with them was used by the camp orchestras…after four weeks the orchestra had a barracks. It was Block 12.<\/span><\/p>

In early 1943, while these preliminary discussions were continuing, a specially convened block leaders\u2019 meeting in Birkenau announced the plan to start another orchestra, this time for female-only players. Hanna Szyller (later Palarczyk), deputy block elder in Block 12, attended the meeting and was in no doubt that the idea for an all-female orchestra originated from Mandl. Female block elders, the slightly privileged prisoners whose job was largely to maintain discipline and distribute food, were now instructed to seek out prisoners who could play instruments.<\/span><\/p>

Among the first to volunteer immediately when she heard about the creation of the new orchestra was Zofia Czajkowska, a thirty-six-year-old Polish music teacher, who had arrived on April 27, 1942, from her hometown of Tarn\u00f3w on the first Polish women\u2019s transport to Auschwitz. Zofia had been tortured in prison before deportation and then spent a year at the camp assigned to the most exhausting physical labor. By early 1943 she was in a weak physical and mental state and saw the orchestra as possibly the only means of escaping from her plight.<\/span><\/p>

The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz Copyright \u00a9 2025 by Anne Sebba. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>

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Photo credit: Serena Bolton<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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ANNE SEBBA is a prize-winning biographer, lecturer, and former Reuters foreign correspondent who has written several books, including\u00a0That Woman\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Les Parisiennes.\u00a0<\/i>A former chair of Britain\u2019s 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.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Anne Sebba An instant USA Today bestseller, The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz by Anne Sebba is a vivid portrait of the disparate women who came together to form an orchestra in order to survive the horrors of Auschwitz. Read on for a featured excerpt! The success of the men\u2019s orchestra, smaller than the big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":11059,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[155,199,446,926,927,2855,1448,2854],"class_list":["post-11053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical-figures","category-world-history","tag-anne-sebba","tag-auschwitz","tag-concentration-camps","tag-holocaust","tag-holocaust-survivors","tag-muscians","tag-nazis","tag-orchestra"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFeatured Excerpt: The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz - The History Reader : The History Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An instant bestseller, Anne Sebba's The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz looks at the Jewish women who formed an orchestra to survive Auschwitz.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thehistoryreader.com\/historical-figures\/featured-excerpt-the-womens-orchestra-of-auschwitz\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Featured Excerpt: The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz - 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