Inherit the truth, 1939-1945 : the documented experiences of a survivor of Auschwitz and Belsen

201 Pages·2012·7.22 MB·English

by  Lasker-Wallfisch

Inherit the Truth 1939–1945

This is the story of the destruction of a talented Jewish family, and of the
survival against all the odds of two young sisters. It is one of the most moving
stories to emerge from the Second World War. Anita and her elder sister Renate
defied death at the hands of the Gestapo and the SS over a period of two and a
half years when they were sucked into the whirlpool of Nazi mass extermination,
being first imprisoned as ‘criminals’ and then being transferred, separately, to
Auschwitz, and finally to Belsen when the Russians approached. They were
saved by their exceptional courage, determination and ingenuity, and by several
improbable strokes of luck. At Auschwitz, Anita escaped annihilation through
her talents as a cellist when she was co-opted into the camp orchestra directed by
Alma Rosé, niece of Gustav Mahler.
Her book is especially remarkable because of the many documents she has
managed to preserve, most of them now lodged in the archives of the Imperial
War Museum in London. In a sequence of family letters to her sister Marianne,
who was marooned in England, from just before the war to 1942 when her
parents were deported and liquidated, an atmosphere of happy normality
gradually gives way to latent terror and foreboding. The appalling predicament
of the Lasker family, and of Anita and Renate in particular when the rest of their
relations had been deported and they were left totally alone in Breslau, could not
be more poignantly conveyed.
After the liberation of Belsen in April 1945, the correspondence with
Marianne in England resumed. Anita was seconded to the British Army, and she
quotes first-hand material about the early days of the occupation, including a
transcript of part of the Lüneburg trial in late 1945 when she gave evidence
about Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz and Belsen, and was confronted in court by
her tormentors. In 1946 she and Renate were both finally permitted to emigrate
to England. Three years later, Anita became a founder member of the English
Chamber Orchestra, in which she still plays the cello.
Inherit the Truth
1939–1945
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

The Documented Experiences of a Survivor of
Auschwitz and Belsen
I dedicate this account of my experiences before, during and after the
Holocaust to my children Raphael and Maya and my grandchildren Ben,
Simon, Joanna and Abraham-Peter

A memorial to my mother and father and the millions who were silenced
and whose stories will never be told; and a tribute to my sister Renate and
my faithful companions of the camp orchestra who shared these traumatic
years with me
***

‘And so the survivor told himself that not to remember was equivalent to
becoming the enemy’s accomplice: whosoever contributes to oblivion
finishes the killer’s work. Hence the vital necessity to bear witness lest one
find oneself in the enemy’s camp.’

From ‘A Plea for the Survivors’ in Elie Wiesel’s A Jew Today
Contents

Title Page
Dedication
Preface by Sir Martin Gilbert
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations

Key to Names
Foreword
Introduction
1 Pre-War Germany and the Kristallnacht
2 The Destruction of a Family
Attempts to arrange emigration before the outbreak of war
Family life after having to leave our home
I go back to school
Forced labour
My parents are deported
3 Alone in Breslau with Renate
4 Convicted Criminals
5 ‘Voluntary’ Transfer to Auschwitz
6 Music for the Inferno
7 From Hell to Hell: Our Miraculous Escape to Belsen
8 The Liberation of Belsen
9 Peace at Belsen: Secondment to the British Army
Contact with Marianne
Searching for a new life
The traumas of achieving entry to England
10 Marooned in Brussels
11 The Boat Across the Channel

Appendices
1 Declaration of Possessions (Vermögenserklärung)
2 Official German Documents Relating to the Seizure of the Lasker Family’s
Property in Breslau
3 Alma Rosé in Auschwitz by Dr Margita Schwalbovà
4 Transcript from the Official British Record of the Trial in Lüneburg
Index
Plates
Copyright
Preface

There are many features of this memoir which give pause for thought. From the
‘old tattered bundle of letters’ which Anita Lasker-Wallfisch reopened towards
what she calls ‘the end of my labours’, a veritable treasure trove emerged. In it
can be seen, on the eve of war, the painful process of failing to obtain the
necessary documents, guarantees, etc, to leave Germany. There is a cruel sense
of time running out, and of British Jewish bureaucracy fumbling, with lack of
funds a constant nagging feature.
Contemporary letters have a tremendous power to recapture the atmosphere of
that time, including, even in dark days, the survival of humour. There is also,
once war comes in September 1939, the continued survival of hope. Perhaps the
enforced move from home will be temporary. Perhaps emigration will still be
possible. As late as April 1940 there are hopes that departure from Germany
might still be an option, possibly to Italy. On every page the reader, knowing the
actual outcome of German Jewry’s fate, is gripped by the spell of hindsight.
When Anita’s sister Marianne despatches two pounds of coffee from her new
home in Britain, it offers all the delights of the ‘miracle drink’ and the hope of
more coffee to come. Hope, like coffee, helped sustain morale. Anita writes:
‘Hope was an elixir that kept us going’. But like the coffee, and the travel plans,
it was in short supply. In January 1941 a letter from Anita’s mother reached her
daughter in London. ‘Well, perhaps in spite of everything’, the mother writes,
‘we will all five of us sit down at a cosy round table one day!’
The denouement was long drawn out and cruel. The terrible fate of Germany’s
Jews was in such violent contrast to their culture and qualities. This book is a
testimony to the maintenance of those qualities to the very end. In July 1941
Anita was sixteen years old. There were still elements of normality in Breslau
nearly two years after the outbreak of war: her birthday presents included a
history of art and an historical atlas, soap and a pair of socks. ‘In the afternoon
we played quartets.’
In April 1942 Anita’s parents were deported. Her grandmother was deported
soon afterwards. The destination was unknown; they were never heard of again.
With those deportations, all hopes were destroyed. Anita’s own path (beginning
with a failed attempt, together with her sister Renate, to escape by train to
German-occupied Paris) went through Auschwitz to Belsen. In Auschwitz she
was in the camp orchestra: to this, she owed her life. ‘I may no longer have had a
name, but I was identifiable. I could be referred to. I was “the cellist”. I had not
melted away into the grey mass of nameless, indistinguishable people.’
The moment of liberation for Anita and her sister was at Belsen. ‘When the
first tank finally rolled into the camp,’ Anita writes, ‘we looked at our liberators
in silence. We were deeply suspicious. We simply could not believe that we had
not been blown up before the Allies could get to us.’ Like so much in this book,
the story of liberation brings a chill to the spine and the realization of the miracle
of survival. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch has given an account which, in its personal
immediacy, conveys many elements of the almost unconveyable.

Martin Gilbert
Merton College
Oxford
1st March 1996
Acknowledgements

My thanks to Louise Greenberg who asked me for some first-hand information
about Theresienstadt for a programme she was preparing for the BBC. I said I
could not give her any because I was not there; but if she should want to know
about places like Auschwitz and Belsen, I could possibly help. This resulted in
the BBC broadcasts about my experiences entitled ‘Inherit the Truth’, adapted
from my original text by Colin McLaren, and an avalanche of letters with
inquiries as to where the book could be obtained. They were followed by an
unexpected offer to publish what I had originally intended to be for immediate
family use only.
I owe special thanks to my publisher and editor Giles de la Mare who with
admirable patience made me see that there is a big divide between the spoken
and the written word and also that the English language has a lot more grammar
than I had given it credit for.
I would also like to thank the Public Record Office who generously permitted
me to use the transcript of the Lüneburg trial (ref. WO 235/14, Crown
Copyright, reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office); Random House for permission to include the quotation from
Elie Wiesel’s A Jew Today; and everyone who encouraged me to go ahead with
this venture.
Illustrations

HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS
1. My father, Alfons Lasker
2. My mother, Edith Lasker
3. My grandmother, Flora Lasker
4. My father
5. Myself, aged about three, pretending to play the cello with a broom and comb
6. Marianne, myself and Renate in about 1930, Breslau
7. Renate, myself, Marianne and my mother in about 1931
8. Weinhold Schule
9. Myself, aged 12–13, in 1938 in Berlin
10. My uncle, Edward Lasker
11. My father and uncle Edward
12. Myself in 1939
13. Renate in 1939
14. Marianne making furniture in my father’s defunct office, Breslau, 1939
15. The family in 1939, still intact and living in the apartment in Kaiser Wilhelm
Strasse
16. A room in our apartment in Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse, 1939
17. Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse 69, Breslau
18. Breslau law court and prison today
19. Alma Rosé with her Wiener Walzermädeln in the late 1930s
20. Auschwitz, 1944: the arrival of a transport from Hungary
21. Auschwitz, 1944: Hungarians queuing up to go into the gas chamber
22. Belsen, about 19th April 1945: SS personnel carrying bodies to the mass
graves
23. Belsen, 1945, mass grave no.3
24. Belsen, 1945, deserted camp
25. Belsen, interpreters’ house in Displaced Persons’ camp
26. Myself on the boat from Ostend to England, 18th March 1946
27. Myself in 1996