The Violinist of Auschwitz

by Jean-Jacques Felstein

Arrested in 1943 and deported to Auschwitz, Elsa survived because she had the 'opportunity' to join the women's orchestra. But Elsa kept her story a secret, even from her own family. Indeed, her son would only discover what had happened to his mother many years later, after gradually unearthing her unbelievable story following her premature death, without ever having revealed her secret to anyone.

Jean-Jacques Felstein was determined to reconstruct Elsa's life in Birkenau, and would go in search of other orchestra survivors in Germany, Belgium, Poland, Israel and the United States. The recollections of Hélène, first violin, Violette, third violin, Anita, a cellist, and other musicians, allowed him to rediscover his 20-year-old mother, lost in the heart of hell.

The story unfolds in two intersecting stages: one, contemporary, is that of the investigation, the other is that of Auschwitz and its unimaginable daily life, as told by the musicians. They describe the recitals on which their very survival depended, the incessant rehearsals, the departure in the mornings for the forced labourers to the rhythm of the instruments, the Sunday concerts, and how Mengele pointed out the pieces in the repertoire he wished to listen to in between 'selections'.

In this remarkable book, Jean-Jacques Felstein follows in his mother's footsteps and by telling her story, attempts to free her, and himself, from the pain that had been hidden in their family for so long

Genres: Nonfiction, War, History, Biography, World War II, Music, Holocaust

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Debra · Rating 3 out of 5]

1943

Elsa is taken to Auschwitz and survives because she played an instrument and was able to join the women's orchestra. She never told her family, her son found out later and worked hard to unearth his mother's history, to learn more about his mother who he had a difficult relationship with.

Contemporary Day

Determined to learn more about her life "Before" he sets out to meet and interview the other orchestra musicians. His quest will take him to many countries where he learns more about the women and his mother.

I know this was a labor of love and had great personal meaning to the author and I hope this brought him peace. I love that he names all the women who were in the orchestra in the Author's note. This is a great story which has also been told before in another book by the same title. That book was a five-star read for me. This one told the story of the same women, but the writing/storytelling did not work for me. Plus, I could not help to compare it to the other book by the same title.

A harrowing and worthwhile story about the women's orchestra in Auschwitz and one man's attempt to learn more about his mother's secret past.

Others enjoyed this more than I did, please seek out their reviews as well. It was hard for me to get past the way the book was written.

Thank you to Penn & Sword and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com

[Maja - BibliophiliaDK ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

INTERESTING NARRATIVE ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST AND THE AFTERMATH

"When you've been to Auschwitz, you can never leave it completely. When you haven't been there, you can never truly understand."

👍 What I Liked 👍

Narration: This is not a memoir. It isn't a biography either. it's somewhere in between with elements borrowed from both genres. The narrator is both telling his story of growing up with a mother, who went through Auschwitz, and he is telling his mother's story as well as the stories of her friends. The narration, therefore, becomes were unique, because it's both the voice of the actual narrator but also the voices of the women who played in the orchestra with the narrator's mother. At first it was difficult to get into, but it quickly became one of the things I enjoyed the most.

Journey: Another thing that made this book quite unique was the journey, that the author describes. His own journey into his mother's history. Through interviews with his mother's friends he learns more about his mother after her death. It is both an emotional and physical journey, and both are fascinating to follow. The author gives away a lot of himself to the reader, which made this a very interesting story to dive into.

👎 What I Disliked 👎

Chronology: I am a sucker for chronology. It is a personal preference of mine, and others might not care all that much. Personally, I was a bit bothered by the jumps back and forth in time. The jumps are clearly marked, which was nice, but as the story went on, I had a hard time keeping things straight and remembering when what had happened.

ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

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[Anna]

As there are now fewer and fewer survivors alive to give their account, it is unsurprising attention is now shifting to the children of those who have now passed away.

For my full review please visit my blog at:https://leftontheshelfbookblog.blogsp...

[Marquise · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did you know that, in the depths of the hell that was Auschwitz, there were orchestras complete with a conductor and professional musicians? Just imagine that, having to go perform backbreaking labour with the constant threat of beatings, a shot, or being sent to the gas chambers, all the while you hear classical music playing as your work detachment goes out, or when the trains arrive with new prisoners, or when the SS officers were in the mood, and so on.

The one the book deals with is the Auschwitz-Birkenau Women's Camp Orchestra, an all-girls ensemble led by an also female conductor, which at some point was conducted by Alma Rosé, the famous violinist and niece to composer Gustav Mahler. The musicians of this orchestra played a variety of instruments, from mandolin to violin and piano, and were of varied backgrounds, some Jewish and some non-Jews, all with a talent for playing a certain instrument or several. One of these musicians was Elsa Miller, the violinist from the title and mother of the author, a Jew from Germany deported to the concentration camp and selected for the orchestra there. She never spoke about her time in Auschwitz, and due to divorce, was absent from her son's life. So absent he didn't know she was a Holocaust survivor until fifteen years after her death, when he was already 35 years old.

Noticing the dissonance between the reverential way his mother's family talked of her and his own embittered view of her due to her coldness and distance, Jean-Jacques Felstein found out from a relative that his mother had been in a concentration camp, and decided to embark on a mission to unearth the details of Elsa's experience as a violinist in Auschwitz by looking for other survivors of the women's orchestra still living. Two other violinists in special, Hélène and Violette, French Jews both, are his first sources and help him discover surprising facts about his mother's hitherto unknown life, and he also finds about some of the other women that shared her fate.

Through Felstein's eyes, we are treated to his journey of discovery, which he presents as a letter to his mother in first person narration. This style puts us in the author's shoes, but is also very difficult to get used to, because he tends to wander around a bit and digressions pop up here and there. The timeline is also hard to get used to, as there's jumps back and forth in time; and he also tends to insert his thoughts and emotions randomly in the middle of narrating an episode from his mother's or another survivor's story. This, the introspective writing and the weird presentation don't contribute to a smooth flow of the story. Besides, at times, the author comes off as self-absorbed because he seems to be more interested in telling the reader about his feelings about a given thing than in telling about the sufferings of his mother and the other ladies at the death camp, and their feelings. There's as much about him as about his mother, sometimes even more, and I'm not sure that readers would be that interested in his own reactions to the tragic story of his mother as they would be in her mother and her fellow musicians. After all, it's the women who survived thanks to music, even if only temporarily for a lot of them, who are the interesting ones with an interesting and sad life story, not the other way round.

Thank you to Pen & Sword History for providing the ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Sandra "Jeanz" · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cover first attracted me to this book, with its attractive violin, marred by the yellow star the Jewish were made to wear when the Nazis came into power giving a stark contrast for what the instrument is used for making beautiful music. When you really think about it in really simplistic terms the violin epitomises love whereas the yellow star really does symbolise hate.

The book begins with quite a long prologue by the author Jean-Jacques Felstein about his at time problematic relationship with his mother Elsa. Jean-Jacques explains he always felt a distance between them. The very fact that his mothers “before”, her history and what she went through during the Holocaust and her time in Auschwitz-Birkenau was never mentioned to him at all. As a child he grew up knowing not to mention it. His parents were divorced meaning it was rather like he had two lives, the one when he was with his father and then the one, he had when he was with his mother. Jean-Jacques describes seeing the numbers on his mother’s arm and knowing what they represented and that her memories of the tie around her having those numbers was not a good time for his mother to think about, never mind speak about. He also had the knowledge that sometimes a hug & kiss from him to his mother, could chase away her nightmares of her time at Auschwitz-Birkenau, if only for a little while. Jean-Jacques remembers talk of the family members that never made it through the journey his mother, Elsa did. Such as his Aunt Lydia, the one in the old photo’s whose old books he loved and read but was never talked in length about as she was from the time “before” the time in “Auschwitz-Birkenau”.

Unfortunately for Jean-Jacques all this mystery and the sense of tragedy about what had happened to his family, made him very insecure and he had awful nightmares where he searched for his parents in burning buildings and then when his parents separated, he was sent to a children’s home and that is where he first heard the truths and horrors about WW2. Jean-Jacques settled more when he realised, he could leave the children’s home to visit his parents. When visiting his mother, Jean-Jacques would see her in her cosmetic salon, Paris-Beaute in Cologne.

It was during school that Jean-Jacques learnt of the real horrors of the Holocaust. His headteacher read the final chapter of the book, The Last Just by Andre Schwartz-Bart, which told him about the true horrors of the men, women and children that were sent to and killed in gas chambers disguised as a shower room. One of his classmates would talk about “Chvitz” and Jean-Jacques began connecting all the little things he hard learnt, seen and perhaps overheard over the years and his nightmares flared again. The one time his mother Elsa ever really told him anything about the Holocaust was when she took him to see the film “The Diary Of Anne Frank”, she explained to him how Anne had almost died in Bergen-Belsen of Typhus, but that was all she ever told him about the awful time in her own history. The other sort of “nod to before” was when Elsa remarried and went on to have a daughter whom she called Lydia after the mysterious “Aunt Lydia” from the past.

It is after Elsa’s death that Jean-Jacques inherits part of her “pension compensation money” from the government and during an argument with his grandmother utters that her daughter had not rotted in Auschwitz for him to do whatever he felt like with that money! Jean-Jacques was 35 years old when he discovered his mother had been part of the Birkenau Orchestra. In fact, it was being selected for this Orchestra that saved her life, though she truly suffered throughout her imprisonment. Jean-Jacques sets about tracing the other women of the Orchestra and the book goes on to tell the story of the “present” where he is going to meet other survivors some remember his mother better than others but all share their own stories with him. The book goes back to the time “before” as the survivors reveal the daily horrors, humiliation and punishments they endured.

This may sound like the wrong thing to say but I hope you understand, I honestly enjoyed reading this book, despite it being about an horrific period in history. It is so well put together, Jean-Jacques goes to great lengths to explain his at points very distanced relationship with his mother Elsa who coped with what had happened to her and her family by not speaking about it. Different people deal with such gruesome histories in their own particular way, her were to leave it behind her, to not speak of it at all, yet she was so clearly deeply affected by it throughout her life, so much so it impacted her own son too. Its so sad that the way he learnt about the Holocaust was via his headteacher at school and a classmate.

I’ll be honest I had expected Jean-Jacques to just be telling his mothers story, which yes, he does learn about the day-to-day realities of his mother existence in Auschwitz-Birkenau but he also tells the stories of the other members of the Orchestra. The survivor’s individual stories, as well as the collective story of the Orchestra. The survivor’s before the Holocaust, how they ended up in Auschwitz, how they survived, who they lost and how they coped and recreated lives after when they had their freedom back.

My immediate thoughts upon finishing this book were that it was a very moving read. I feel it was as much about Jean-Jacques, his mother Elsa, and the other survivors as well as the ins and outs of how the Orchestra was formed and what those women were expected to do, all in equal parts.

Summing up, this book begins as a record of a rather fraught relationship between a boy, then man with his mother. A mother that had been through a horrible time whilst being held prisoner in Auschwitz-Bikenau. His mother Elsa is so traumatised even years and years later that she can never bring herself to speak to her son about what went on there. So, after his mother’s death, he sets himself the task of tracing and contacting the other women that played in the Birkenau Orchestra. Jean-Jacques travels to meet these other strong women who survived who are willing to tell him their own story, as well as what they remember about the Orchestra and his mother Elsa. If you are fascinated about this dark, era of history, then this book is a must read for you, it is so much more than a memoir.

[Sanskriti Nagar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books about survival never make for an easy read. The Violinist of Auschwitz is no exception to this. I received an ARC of the book from NetGalley and Pen & Sword, and I’m so glad to have read this one.

Jean-Jacques Felstein did not have the most present or warm mother. As a child, he craved her attention and love but found her somewhat distant. But there was a good reason why Elsa, Jean-Jacques’ mother was the way she was.

“You’d witnessed it, you still bore the scars: a five-digit number, underlined by a downward-pointing triangle, tattooed on the outside of your left arm, 10 centimetres from the elbow joint. The blue-black number was quite small, but each stroke that made it was a cut containing unspeakable offences.”

Elsa was a survivor of the Holocaust. She had been interned at the Birkenau concentration camp in Auschwitz and had survived its horror. Suddenly, as if in a heartbeat, you understand (although who can truly understand the terror of having survived such inhumanity) why Elsa seems preoccupied and almost, cold.

As I read the first few pages of the book, I was looking at Felstein as if he were a child, my heart reaching out to him, wanting him to feel safe and loved. His childhood is shaken up when a family “discussion” reveals to him, just how much more distant his mother will now be.

“I still see the four of us around the table in the family living room: the two of us, your mother and your stepfather. The latter began to ask me, jokingly, in your presence, what I would think if you remarried. You were silent, and showed little enthusiasm. It was so sad; like a scene from an Italian comedy. The world was upside down. In short, they were asking my consent for you to remarry and move 10,000 kilometres away from me.”

For a child, this was the worst kind of disaster – up until now Jean-Jacques at least had had a chance to be with his mother, even if she wasn’t exactly the kind of mother he craved for. Now Elsa would be on the other side of the world in America, leaving Jean-Jacques even more bereft than before.

“Forgive me for telling you so bluntly, you who suffered both, but the explosion of our family was as intense for me as the Nazi massacres. In the childish universe of which I was the uncertain centre, you and my father formed the retaining arc. It still wavered, the three of us weren’t very strong, and your separation destroyed the little internal security I had left.”

Perhaps for want of a different life to move forward, or perhaps to leave behind the memories of a torturous past, Elsa made the move to America, remarried, and had a daughter. A few years later she died. Her premature death left Jean-Jacques feeling hollow. He sought his mother in the vacuum left behind – her history was pretty vague and none of her family nor Elsa herself, had ever discussed it openly – for who would want to scratch at a traumatic wound? But after Elsa’s passing, Jean-Jacques finds himself wanting to ask all the questions he didn’t ask of his mother while she was alive.

“I asked myself the question that arguably plagued the lives of all the children of survivors in secret: ‘What did she have to do to survive this?’”

Thus began an investigation and a hunt to uncover who his mother, Elsa Felstein (née Miller) was.

“It’s a way of implementing a fantasy I’ve always had of getting you out of Birkenau, or of trying to replace your ghost, at least, and one that doesn’t have to bother with historical consistency or chronology.”

The answer came to Jean-Jacques through a photograph he found of a group of orchestra players. Through successive revelations from his family, he discovered that Elsa was a violinist in the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. The Orchestra was formed in 1943 in the Birkenau concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. It was active for 19 months and it consisted of up to 45 young females of Jewish and Slavic descent at one time. They played music to help the SS with the marches of the prisoners and during the daily roll call as well as conducted concerts for the SS on Sundays. This discovery led Jean-Jacques onto a search for other survivors of the orchestra taking him to Germany, Poland, the United States, and Israel, in an attempt to reconstruct his mother’s life.

“Through their experiences, I might come across something about you that escaped me during your lifetime, and from which your death almost cut me off: the echo of your emotions and your pain of this moment in history.”

I was surprised at this discovery. I have read a number of books about World War II and the Holocaust, but I didn’t know about the orchestra’s existence until now. I was now haunted by the kind of questions that Jean–Jacques must have been haunted by – how could anyone play in an orchestra in the midst of such gruesome tragedy unfolding? How could the SS demand something as beautiful as music to play at the same time as the men and women and children were being gassed and cremated?

The book doesn’t always stay in chronological order. There are two parts overlapping each other – one is the investigation that Jean-Jacques undertakes, meeting other women survivors from Birkenau and learning their stories, and the other is the stories themselves which take you back to 1943-1944 in Birkenau.

“There are times when what is logical, chronological and coherent has no place, and this is never truer than when one speaks of Birkenau.”

The overlap of the narratives is almost critical to Jean-Jacque’s hunt for his mother – it goes on to show just the kind of effect Birkenau and Nazism have had on people’s lives and how, even fifty years later, it continues to haunt them. This is why there cannot be a linear narrative. The part about what these survivors had to do to survive the camps and the Nazis is very much what continues to define them.

‘When you’ve been to Auschwitz, you can never leave it completely. When you haven’t been there, you can never truly understand…’

Jean-Jacques understands the sensitive nature of the mission he is on. As much as he would like to find his mother in each survivor’s story, he never makes her the central part of their narratives. He lets each story unfold in its own context. This is why every story makes you cringe, every story makes you want to weep. One such description is of Hélène – newly arrived at the camp who is being made to audition for the orchestra – the absurdity of which hit me hard.

“Hélène had arrived in this place only a few hours earlier. On the ramp, her little brother had been led to what she soon learned was the gas chamber. She’s dressed in rags, helpless, shaved, and branded like a piece of cattle. She expects to die in a short time. A hundred yards behind her, the crematoriums are smoking, with flames coming out of the fireplace. The Nazis are burning her people. This is the end, and she has to make music as if she’s dancing on the corpses. Perhaps for a challenge, in an homage to life, and precisely because it’s in a place where only death has its place, she’ll play what she loves now more than anything.”

Towards the end, after all his interviews and investigations are exhausted, Jean-Jacques undertakes a trip to modern-day Auschqitx, now a tourist center. The author’s exploration through the Birkenau camp comes as a sort of catharsis.

“Although I travelled through Birkenau in my mind when your comrades were telling me their stories, when I finally went there in person it was to verify that you didn’t exist there anymore, and that my story couldn’t start there because nothing could ever start there. I wasn’t born there, and there’s nothing of me in that place at all. I don’t need to lock myself in there on purpose to redeem some sort of error that neither you nor I made.”

Finally, as if reaching some sort of compromise, Jean-Jacques finds himself making peace about what he has learned of his mother, what he has learned of the camp, and how he must now let go.

“In what I can now call my quest to find you, I know very well that I couldn’t help but imagine your life in that place. I followed in your footsteps and looked over your shoulder in my writing, all so that I, too, could escape from Birkenau. And I finally understand that it was possible, helpful, vital even, to do so. You were a woman, and even though you’re no longer here, I found you and accepted you in me, in spite of the fact I’d always denied you were there. I have within me – among other things – both a woman and a death that I must learn to live with. You can rest in peace, and I can finally make you speak, in my own words.”

There were many painful parts to this book. Too many to name in fact. But the most painful one was the letter, in the end, penned by Elsa to her newborn son. It made me weep, hearing at last, how Elsa felt towards her son, and why she decided to keep a part of her life from him.

“My little one, you can’t do anything with these images of death that pass through my mind, the questions that haunt me, and the guilt that undermines me. They’re just acid-like, crystallized evil. There’s nothing good in them that we can share. I don’t want you to have to wade through all this, and I’ll forbid you from doing so for as long as I can.”

Nor was music ever the same for Elsa. She had played to survive at Auschwitz, and now music had been tainted for life. How it must have pained her to write this, to not be able to sing nursery rhymes with her child ever.

“If we started dancing around to nursey rhymes, I’m afraid I’d be dancing on mass graves at the same time.”

The inability of other people to truly grasp her experience kept her from sharing her experiences with others.

“What does my hunger and theirs, my fears and theirs, my fatigue and theirs have in common, apart from the mere sound of those empty words?”

But in the end, what Elsa wanted from her son, and what Jean-Jacques wanted to do for his mother were really the same things – to pull her over to the other side.

“I’ll hold on to what oppresses me, and risk living in that place between you, who represents everything that is real, the only thing I care about in my life, and my visions, my nightmares, and my imagined death. I just hope you’ll be strong enough to pull me over to your side.”

I am surely going to be thinking about The Violinist of Auschwitz for a long time.

The book is expected to release on 30 November 2021. Grab a copy if you can!

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The full review is posted online on my blog: Book Review: The Violinist of Auschwitz by Jean-Jacques Felstein

[Lori Sinsel Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read dozens and dozens of books about WWII, both fiction and non-fiction, this one I found somewhat different than the ordinary biography, auto-biography or memoir.
It begins with the author writing/talking to his mother, whom I gather from reading was not a mother that was there for him. She was somewhat distant, preoccupied, not warm nor loving and as I understood it, the author was pretty much raised by other family members. He talks about how these family members put his mother on a pedestal and pretty much worshipped her, this mad him angry and upset, he couldn't see how this cold, distant person he knew was deserving of the adulation they put forth.
His mother, like the biggest part of the survivors from that awful time in our history did not talk about it, did not share, they kept a huge part of themselves hidden, this I understand. I understand it because my father served the duration of the USAs involvement in the war, from northern Africa, through Italy, France, and into Germany when the camps were liberated, and never spoke a word about it once he came home.
This book is about the author's quest to know and understand his mother, years after her death he was still seeking knowledge of her. Through a series of interviews with others that he found were with his mother during this horrific time period he learns what made his mother the person he knew. It is an intimate look at what these women endured and their bravery it has taken to share their stories.
It is a hard book to read, it does skip around but if you take the time it is a really touching story and one everyone needs to hear.
I enjoyed it very much and would recommend to serious students of WWII and the Holocaust, this is a don't miss book for them.
Thank you to Pen & Sword publishing and Net Galley for the free ARC, I am leaving my honest review in return.

[Lisa Konet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though this book was hard to follow at times, I still enjoying despite the horrors, tragedy and violent events that took place. I loved the alternating POV in the timeline of how this memoir was told and glad the author shared this story. It is not easy reading but these stories deserve to be told when there is a glimmer of hope in hell on Earth.

Recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley, Jean-Jacque Felstein and Pen & Sword History for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 11/30/21

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
WWII books are always fascinating and yet horrifying but always important so we can learn from history. This book was hard to follow but I'm not sure if it was the translation or not. The timeline wasn't clear and the stories tended to jump around and made it confusing.

[Sue Plant · Rating 3 out of 5]

would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book

an insightful read that leaves you at times cold...when you realise the implications of what some of the people on those death camps had to do to survive....

if you are interested in this type of book its well worth a read

[Garin Campbell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish.
Found the book hard to follow.

[Crystal Credeur · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of a camp violinist and her subsequent years following liberation, The Violinist of Auschwitz is told by the violinist’s son. He details the time of the orchestra’s presence in camp while trying to understand his mother’s distanced relationship with him. He interviews several orchestra members, detailing the remaining effects of camp life on each one.

[Ron Baumer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly inspirational book. The stories told are heartbreaking. The author’s writing style is to tell the story like a diary entry and to make you part of it. A great read.

Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[isara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Books about World War II catch my attention, I find them so interesting. And I can say that this book taught me a lot. They way jewish people got treated just broke my heart, it‘s insane.

I recommend this book for everyone who‘s interested in World War II

[Anni · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ainakin äänikirjana kirja oli tosi sekava ja henkilöitä oli niin paljon että oli mahdotonta pysyä perässä kuka oli kuka. Olin luullut että kirja käsittelisi orkesterin jäsenten selviytymistarinoita, mutta se olikin lähinnä kirjailijan ajatuksia vaikeasta äitisuhteestaan ja ylisukupolvisista traumoista. Pidin jopa hieman häiritsevänä sitä kuinka kirjailija nosti itseään jatkuvasti esiin melko runsaalla metatekstillä ja sillä että koko kirja oli enemmän tai vähemmän julkinen kirje hänen kuolleelle äidilleen?

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Violinist of Auschwitz is a poignant, dreadful, crushing, evocative and compelling true story about the author who is desperate for answers to deeply-engrained questions about his murky existence. His memories of his mother haunt him and he needs a "benchmark" of who she was. She did not tell him she was a prisoner at Auschwitz or why she had only a part of a violin. Perhaps if she had lived longer...

In 1997 Jean-Jacques Felstein's search took him to several countries to visit the few Women's Orchestra survivors to interview them as well as to concentration camps. The author narrates two timelines, WWII and 1997, and writes from his perspective to his mother, Elsa, as well as from hers to his. The writing, sentiments and insight are so gorgeous and so beautiful they often moved me to tears. And then the story itself. My words are inadequate but this book took my breath away, one of the most memorable books I have ever read.

Elsa joined the Women's Orchestra at Auschwitz in 1943. Though music was intended for the pleasure of Nazis, it saved lives by giving the women a purpose and alleviated their abuse for a few short hours. However, this tormented the other thousands in the camp and their jealousy caused problems for the musicians. Horrendous barbaric atrocities are not glossed over but told in great detail. They actually happened to human beings who barely existed in a constant state of torment. Several women were highlighted in the book as well as a list of orchestra members.

Little (but big) details stand out such as the unnecessary vase and rice pudding stories. I was not aware of the Russian violin method! The orchestra conductor and musicians mastered 150 songs and made a tremendous impact, even on Nazis. Such a juxtaposition of music and "the ramp" so near by.

The photographs are remarkably personal, especially the one of the author as a child waiting to leave for Cologne. At the end, the author writes about the women's lives after their experiences and connects them. He discovers women who knew his mother.

My sincerest thank you to Pen & Sword for the honour of reading this powerful and emotive book. My special appreciation and gratitude to the author who spent endless hours of research and interviewing so that he and others may know about the past .

[Mihai Stere · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️În orchestra de la Auschwitz. Secretul mamei mele
Bună prieteni,azi vin cu recenzia acestei cărți foarte triste despre Auschwitz care a avut un impact mult mai mare asupra mea decât restul cărților pe care le-am citit pănă acum despre auschwitz, asta și deoarece am putut să simt și mai ales să văd cu ochii mei ceea ce autorul descrie în această carte vizitând acel loc sinistru în care milioane de oameni și-au pierdut viața.

Cartea începe cu plecarea într-o lungă călătorie pentru a cunoaște supravieţuitoarele orchestrei de la Auschwitz-Birkenau, Felstein ne oferă o listă detaliată a componentelor acesteia, începând de la dirijoarele și violonistele și terminând cu acordeonistele sau chiar cu chitaristele.De asemenea, datorita reconstituirii lui știm astăzi că la Auschwitz-Birkenau se cânta Rossini, Strauss, Berlioz, Dvorak, Chopin, Verdi sau Puccin. Autorul ne descrie povestea formării trioului Belgian dar si pe cea a Almei, dirijoarea orchestrei, singura care reușea să le ridice de la pamant când căderea pārea aproape imposibilă de evitat, alungând din mintea lor imaginea morții, de asemenea ne mai spune și povestea plină de durere și neputinţã a Helenei, cat si drama vieţii Violettei dar și a celorlalte componente.
Elsa,mama autorului a păstrat tăcerea asupra anilor petrecuți la Auschwitz, iar fiul ei a ajuns să-și cunoască cu adevărat mama numai după ce a trecut mult timp de la moartea ei.

În final pot spune că Jean-Jacques Felstein cu această carte încearcă să reconstruiască viața mamei sale mergând pe urmele ei și totodată își dorește să găsească răspunsuri la întrebările care i-au marcat copilăria și totodată tinerețea.
Lectură plăcută vă doresc prieteni!❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
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[Michelle Kidwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Violinist of Auschwitz
by Jean-Jacques Felstein
Pub Date 30 Nov 2021
Pen & Sword, Pen & Sword History
Biographies & Memoirs | History | Nonfiction (Adult)





I am reviewing a copy of The Violinist of Auschwitz through Pen and Sword History and Netgalley:





Elsa was arrested in 1943 and deported to Auschwitz, Elsa survived because she joined the women's orchestra. But Elsa kept her story a secret, even from her own family. Indeed, her son would only discover what had happened to his mother many years later, after gradually unearthing her unbelievable story following her premature death, without ever having revealed her secret to anyone.






Jean-Jacques Felstein was determined to reconstruct Elsa's life in Birkenau, and would go in search of other orchestra survivors in Germany, Belgium, Poland, Israel and the United States. In reconstructing his Mother’s life in Auschwitz the recollections of Hélène, first violin, Violette, third violin, Anita, a cellist, and other musicians, allowed him to rediscover his 20-year-old mother, lost in the heart of hell.




The story unfolds in two intersecting stages: one, contemporary, is that of the investigation, the other is that of Auschwitz and its unimaginable daily life, as told by the musicians. They describe the recitals on which their very survival depended, the incessant rehearsals, the departure in the mornings for the forced labourers to the rhythm of the instruments, the Sunday concerts, and how Mengele pointed out the pieces in the repertoire he wished to listen to in between 'selections.



The Violinist of Auschwitz is a powerful true story of survival against all odds.



I give the Violinist of Auschwitz five out of five stars!

[theliterateleprechaun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Consistently aware of the remoteness between himself and his ever-distant mother, the author attempts to reconstruct what happened at Birkenau so that he can understand his mother better. Uniquely written, diary style, Feldstein’s journey includes interviewing fellow members of the Birkenau Orchestra to which his mother belonged. Connecting with other orchestra survivors allowed the author to re-discover his mother and release the pain that had remained in his family for decades.

I can appreciate that the author chose his writing style to make the reader part of the experience. For me, it made it a difficult read. The unease is all on my part, though, as I was expecting something more than promised. It wasn’t the content I struggled with, it was the presentation.

I am completely aware that this must have been quite the cathartic experience for the author and I want to express my gratitude in publishing this account. I’m thankful for the opportunity to read this moving research and for the reminder that my horrified reaction is a good thing – for when people stop reacting to what happened in those camps, then we can’t call ourselves ‘human’ any longer.

Publishes November 30, 2021.

I was gifted this advance copy by Jean-Jacques Felstein, Pen & Sword, and NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.

[Sydney Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean-Jacques loses his mother at a young age. She was a quiet, detached woman who survived hell on earth, Auschwitz. Elsa, his mother, survived the camps thanks to the violin but promised herself that she’d lock the memories deep inside, sharing nothing with her son who longs for an emotional connection with her that he just didn’t get. So he sets out to discover who his mother was during this time by visiting other survivors of the womens orchestra. While trying to learn more about his mother, he captures the stories of the other women and in a way discovers a bit of himself and how past experiences shaped the way he was raised.

What caught my attention right off the bat was the title. Having read a fictional account of the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz, I was already familiar with Alma Rose and I was intrigued at the opportunity to get to know more about the other women who’s musical gifts saw them through history’s darkest hour. They came from all over Europe, Jews and non Jews, each with their own story to tell. Some recalled Elsa fondly, some did not. I finished the book still not knowing much about Elsa but I learned so much about the orchestra as a whole and how their unity as a group helped them
To survive.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, Pen & Sword and Jean-Jacques Feldstein for the opportunity to read this captivating book.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Violinist of Auschwitz by Jean-Jacques Felstein was a beautifully written book that touched my heart.
These books are not an easy read and you will need tissues and lots of them.

This book is set in WWII this story unfolds in two intersecting stages: one, contemporary, is that of the investigation, the other is that of Auschwitz and its unimaginable daily life, as told by the musicians. They describe the recitals on which their very survival depended, the incessant rehearsals, the departure in the mornings for the forced labourers to the rhythm of the instruments, the Sunday concerts, and how Mengele pointed out the pieces in the repertoire he wished to listen to in between 'selections'.

This is a remarkable book, by Jean-Jacques Felstein that follows in his mother's footsteps and by telling her story, attempts to free her, and himself, from the pain that had been hidden in their family for so long. I find Books about this time are always important so we can learn from history.

Big Hugs for Jean-Jacques Felstein and his family x

Big Thank you to Pen & Sword publishing and Net Galley for the free ARC

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My heart goes out to Jean-Jacques Felstein; I could literally feel his heart breaking as he researched the details of his mother's time as a violinist in the concentration camps. His mother wouldn't discuss this with him and after she passed away, he discovered these stories from behind the walls.

I've read many books about WWII and concentration camps, but I don't recall ever reading about orchestras. I found it interesting, but also heartbreaking. I'm glad that I read The Violinist of Auschwitz.

This is not historical fiction, it is as factful as the author could determine. History doesn't read the same way that historical fiction reads. I couldn't read this book straight through, I needed other books intermixed ... as this was too difficult to give my undivided attention.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author Jean-Jacques Felstein and the publisher Oen & Sword for the opportunity to read the advance read copy of The Violinist of Auschwitz. Publication date is Nov 30, 2021. Again ... my heart goes out to Jean-Jacques Felstein, thank you for writing.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit draggy in parts, the story focuses on the son of an Auschwitz-I survivor and member of the women's orchestra (the means by which she survived). His mother and father are no longer together but her family, at her request, finds her a 2nd husband in America, with whom she has a daughter very much younger than her son. At 40, his mother dies of cancer.
The book catalogs his research into his mother's life in Auschwitz and Birkenau, her liberation, and her attempt to start a Parisian beauty shop in Cologne, Germany, and the stories of his visits to see her when he wasn't living with his father. As he sees his mother through the eyes of other survivors, and sees the camps through their eyes, he begins to understand better why most survivors find it very difficult to impossible to discuss their time in the camps with anyone who wasn't there. They dredge up their memories to help him come to terms with his childhood and her life.
The end of the book seems to be, mostly, a rehash of his mother's life using the information garnered in his conversations with her fellow survivors.

[Adelaide Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5* Uma história real, partindo de uma premissa que gostei, o autor que cresceu com uma mãe ausente e fechada no seu segredo, vem após a morte desta tentar descobrir o passado da mãe.
O livro é escrito como se o autor estivesse a escrever uma carta à progenitora morta, alternando entre o passado e o presente.
É através de mulheres sobreviventes que fizeram como a mãe parte da Orquestra de Auschwitz que o autor finalmente compreende a mãe.
Há no entanto um facto que me desagradou solenemente, por diversas vezes é mencionado que as mulheres ao chegarem a Auschwitz eram tosquiadas e “depiladas”. Não! As mulheres eram tosquiadas como se de animais se tratassem e “rapadas” com lâminas por vezes rombas que além dos pelos lhes tiravam pele

[Aria Harlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This wa ssuch a beautifully raw and emotive read that will stay with me for a long time. The fact that Elsa kept her past to herself for so many years and it was only discovered by her son after her death just added an added depth of emotion to the book. It was so well written and brought me to tears on practically every page.
Through the recollections of other musicians from auschwitz that he found during his investigation he discovered who his mother was as a young woman and how she kept strong in the midst of the fires of hell.
A truly stunning book that everybody should read. I loved it.

[McBreakneck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a few Auschwitz novels, seven or eight so far, from those that really tug on the heart strings to the drier more historical factual.

This one is at the historical end, but is a lot about the author's journey and research. The stories of the survivors are clearly well researched but the presentation is quite dry.

It didn't really work for me but it may be better suited to historical readers and those who enjoy seeing the journey of the research laid out of the page.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pen & Sword

[Leith Devine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a powerful book that left me in tears. I was sad, and angry too, at the inhumane treatment of the prisoners. I’ve read a lot of WWII historical fiction, but this is different because it tells the story of the author’s mother, who wouldn’t speak of this time when she was alive.
I highly recommend this book, be safe to have tissues nearby. 4 stars.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

[Galina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Такие книги всегда тяжело читаются! Начинается, как попытка разобраться в отношениях сына и матери. Заканчивается, как книга о воле, жизни и попытке начать заново после ада лагерных лет в Аушвице (Освенциме), Биркенау. Очень много воспоминаний (со слов бывших узниц - женщин), много бытовых подробностей. Всех женщин, выживших, кому повезло, объединяет то, что они играли в реальном оркестре в Аушвице на тех или иных инструментах. Какие были порядки и как они после не могли слышать музыку и играть.
Чудовищное преступление против людей.

[Anneli Renfors · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dokumenttiromaani Auschwitzin naisorkesterista, jota ohjasi Alma Rosé, Gustav Mahlerin veljentytär. Kuolemaa uhmaten, pysyäkseen hengissä, naisorkesteri viihdyttää natseja klassisella ja viihteellisemmälläkin musiikilla. Ympärillä vankitovereita kaasutetaan ja ruumiita poltetaan. Kirjan kirjoittaja, Jean-Jacques Felstein, etsii oman äitinsä tarinaa, omaa tarinaansa siinä ohessa. Felsteinin äiti oli yksi naisorkesterin jäsenistä. Hän hylkäsi poikansa Eurooppaan ja muutti Amerikkaan perustaen sinne uuden perheen.

[Selma Björninen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kaksi tähteä vain mielenkiintoisesta näkökulmasta keskitysleirien kauhuihin, jollaisesta en ainakaan itse niitä tarinoita ole aikaisemmin kuullut.
Kirja itsessään heikosti kirjoitettu, sekavaa tekstiä täynnä kymmeniä henkilöhahmoja joka vaikeuttaa seuraamista. Koko teos tuntui lähinnä vain kirjailijan itsensä joltakin erikoiselta terapiamatkalta omaan historiaansa. Ikään kuin hänellä olisi ollut tarve saada tämä ”pois systeemistä”. Teksti myös toistaa itseään ja useasti tuntui, että olen lukenut samat asiat jo moneen kertaan.