What role could music possibly play in a death camp? In 1943, 50 female inmates were conscripted into an orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Historian Anne Sebba tells their remarkable story.

Amid unimaginable brutality, they performed for both exhausted forced labourers and their Nazi captors—a harrowing existence that, nonetheless, saved nearly all their lives.

Award-winning historian Anne Sebba brings this extraordinary story to light, drawing on meticulous research and exclusive first-hand accounts. From conductor Alma Rosé, niece of Gustav Mahler, to the orchestra’s last surviving member, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Sebba unravels the astonishing tale of the musicians, their resilience, and the complex responses of fellow prisoners.

This event will last approximately 1 hour, without an interval.

About the speaker:

Anne Sebba is a historian and one of Britain’s most distinguished biographers who began her career as a Reuters correspondent based in London and Rome. She has written eleven works of non-fiction, mostly about iconic twentieth-century women, which have been translated into several languages including French, Polish, Czech, Japanese and Chinese. She makes regular television and radio appearances and has presented two BBC radio documentaries about musicians. She is the author of the international bestseller That Woman, an acclaimed biography of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, and the prize-winning Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died Under Nazi Occupation. Her most recent book, Ethel Rosenberg: The Short Life and Great Betrayal of an American Wife and Mother, was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize. Anne is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research and trustee of the National Archives Trust. She lives in London

Ariana Neumann is the New York Times bestselling author of When Time Stopped, which won the Dayton Peace Prize for Non-Fiction in 2021, Best Memoir at the Jewish Book Awards in 2020 and was shortlisted for various prizes including The Wingate Prize.

Ariana was born and grew up in Venezuela. She has a BA in History and French Literature from Tufts University, an MA in Spanish and Latin American Literature from New York University and a PgDIP in Psychology of Religion from University of London. She previously was involved in publishing, worked as a foreign correspondent for Venezuela’s The Daily Journal and her writing has appeared in a variety of publications including The European, the Jewish Book Council and The New York Times.