Anita Lasker at age 13 with her cello.
In Friday’s (8/9) New Yorker, Alex Ross writes, “ ‘Hier spricht Anita Lasker, eine deutsche Jüdin,’ a voice says, youthful but precise. ‘This is Anita Lasker speaking, a German Jew.’ The recording was made on April 16, 1945, at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, one day after British troops liberated the site. The BBC was eliciting statements from various former inmates. Lasker, then nineteen, described how she had first been imprisoned on political grounds, then sent to Auschwitz, and finally consigned to Belsen…. Lasker was a cellist in the Auschwitz women’s orchestra, and she played music amid the horror. A few times, she falters as she delivers her account, but she is matter-of-fact to the end. And so she remains, at the age of ninety-nine…. Daniela Völker’s new documentary, ‘The Commandant’s Shadow,’ which is now streaming on Max,” includes commentary from Anita Lasker-Wallfisch (her married name) and others. “For decades, Lasker-Wallfisch said relatively little about her experiences in the Holocaust. She concentrated on establishing herself as a musician—she was a founding member of the English Chamber Orchestra—and raising a family…. During the intake process [at Auschwitz], Lasker-Wallfisch casually mentioned that she played the cello. ‘That is fantastic,’ one of the prisoner orderlies said. ‘You will be saved.’… Musicians received preferential treatment because the S.S. leaders liked having live music at the camp.”
