MJH | The Last Musician of Auschwitz: Teaching About Music During the Holocaust

Join the Museum of Jewish Heritage and Center for Jewish History as we explore the story of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a Holocaust survivor who played in the Auschwitz orchestra. Through primary sources, testimony, and lesson plans, we will explore pedagogy for bringing this into your classroom.

Forced into factory labor, Anita joined a small resistance effort—forging papers for French prisoners of war—and was eventually arrested for forgery and attempted escape. After more than a year in prison she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she survived nearly a year because she played in the women’s orchestra, required to perform marches as prisoners left for forced labor and to entertain SS officers.

In 1945 she was evacuated to Bergen-Belsen, where starvation, disease, and death were pervasive. She was liberated by British forces on April 15, 1945. Anita came to England in 1946, built a career as a professional cellist, and in 1952 married the pianist Peter Wallfisch. She is the mother of two children and part of a multigenerational musical family. Her memoir, Inherit the Truth, 1939–1945, recounts her experiences.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was born in Breslau (then Germany, now Wrocław, Poland) into a cultured, assimilated Jewish family where music, literature, and languages shaped daily life. A gifted cellist, she experienced early antisemitism and, as Nazi laws tightened, lost access to schooling and lessons. After The November Pogrom and failed efforts to emigrate, her family was trapped. Her parents were deported and murdered in 1942, leaving sixteen-year-old Anita and her sister alone.

Participants will receive CTLE credit.

To register, click here.