Honouring and remembering  the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz - video Dailymotion

SussexWorld

At this year’s Petworth Literary Festival, award-winning historian Anne Sebba will tell a remarkable story of the strength of the human spirit amid unimaginable cruelty.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon. My name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely to

00:07speak to Anne Seba this afternoon. Now, the Pepworth Literary Festival is on Mr Ponison.

00:12Anne, you are one of the guests talking about an extraordinary book which came out in hardback

00:17in March this year, paperback in March next year. It's the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz. Now,

00:25it sounds a horrendous subject to deal with, but you are talking about the book in terms of being

00:30a celebratory in the human spirit. Yes, I hope people will go away with that in their minds,

00:38that actually these women decided that there was hope in the world and life was worth living in

00:44spite of seeing the worst that humanity had to offer. They pulled together and so there is

00:51sisterhood and solidarity and they survived.

00:57And it's the fact that surrounded by appalling atrocity, they wanted to live. How can you

01:02understand that, that people still cling to life and cling to hope and find it?

01:08Because I think ultimately, that's how we're made. There are people who don't see it like that,

01:15but ultimately these women wanted to make a better world. They wanted to have families,

01:20they were young women. And so that's what the orchestra gave them, the possibility of seeing

01:27a tomorrow, a better tomorrow.

01:30And there must be such rich satisfaction in telling this story. As you were saying,

01:34you wanted to name the names, to let these names be known.

01:38For me, it really is a privilege. I know that's an overused word.

01:45But honestly, it is. In this context, because these were completely unknown women and many of

01:52them were girls. They were kids of sort of 15 and 16 who'd maybe learnt the piccolo or the flute in

02:00school. And I've got a granddaughter of 14 who plays the cello. And so I think what we all do when

02:07we read this sort of book is we think, gosh, what would I have done? Would I have managed? And so that's

02:13really what was in my mind when I was writing it. How on earth did ordinary people rise to the occasion

02:22in these appalling, extraordinary times? And they're not necessarily heroism. They're not necessarily

02:31heroines in the sort of big sense that you think of somebody doing heroics. But they are all heroines

02:39to me, because they survived. And that was the number one way to resist the Nazis who are trying

02:46to eradicate the entire Jewish race. These women survived. So they deserve to be commemorated.

02:55And another context for the book is the fact that there is just one of them left still alive.

03:02Yes, Anita Laskervalfish, who is extraordinary. And she's 100. And I wonder if any of you read that

03:10when she was 100, King Charles came to visit her. He didn't just send her the telegram. He actually

03:16went to her house. So that gives you an indication of how very, very special she is.

03:23Goodness. Well, congratulations on the book. Really lovely to speak to you. Really great to

03:28hear that you are heading to the Petworth Literary Festival. And thank you very much, indeed.

03:33Thank you very much. I'm really looking forward to telling this story in a bit more detail than now.

Honouring and remembering the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz

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