The Truth about Fania Fénelon and the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau

The Truth about Fania Fénelon and the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau PDF Author: Susan Eischeid
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319310380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
This book explores how the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau has been remembered in both media and popular culture since the end of the Second World War. In particular it focuses on Fania Fenelon’s memoir, Playing for Time (1976), which was subsequently adapted into a film. Since then the publication has become a cornerstone of Holocaust remembrance and scholarship. Susan Eischeid therefore investigates whether it deserves such status, and whether such material can ever be considered reliable source material for historians. Using divergent source material gathered by the author, such as interviews with the other surviving members of the orchestra, this Pivot seeks to shed light on this period of women’s history, and questions how we remember the Holocaust today.

The Truth about Fania Fénelon and the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau

The Truth about Fania Fénelon and the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau PDF Author: Susan Eischeid
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319310380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
This book explores how the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau has been remembered in both media and popular culture since the end of the Second World War. In particular it focuses on Fania Fenelon’s memoir, Playing for Time (1976), which was subsequently adapted into a film. Since then the publication has become a cornerstone of Holocaust remembrance and scholarship. Susan Eischeid therefore investigates whether it deserves such status, and whether such material can ever be considered reliable source material for historians. Using divergent source material gathered by the author, such as interviews with the other surviving members of the orchestra, this Pivot seeks to shed light on this period of women’s history, and questions how we remember the Holocaust today.

Forbidden Music

Forbidden Music PDF Author: Michael Haas
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300154313
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
DIV With National Socialism's arrival in Germany in 1933, Jews dominated music more than virtually any other sector, making it the most important cultural front in the Nazi fight for German identity. This groundbreaking book looks at the Jewish composers and musicians banned by the Third Reich and the consequences for music throughout the rest of the twentieth century. Because Jewish musicians and composers were, by 1933, the principal conveyors of Germany’s historic traditions and the ideals of German culture, the isolation, exile and persecution of Jewish musicians by the Nazis became an act of musical self-mutilation. Michael Haas looks at the actual contribution of Jewish composers in Germany and Austria before 1933, at their increasingly precarious position in Nazi Europe, their forced emigration before and during the war, their ambivalent relationships with their countries of refuge, such as Britain and the United States and their contributions within the radically changed post-war music environment. /div

Playing for Time

Playing for Time PDF Author: Fania Fénelon
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815604945
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
In 1943, Fania Fénelon was a Paris cabaret singer, a secret member of the Resistance, and a Jew. Captured by the Nazis, she was sent to Auschwitz, and later, Bergen-Belsen. With unnerving clarity and an astonishing ability to find humor where only despair should prevail, the author charts her eleven months as one of "the orchestra girls"; writes of the loves, the laughter, hatreds, jealousies, and tensions that racked this privileged group whose only hope of survival was to make music.

Lovers in Auschwitz

Lovers in Auschwitz PDF Author: Keren Blankfeld
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316564796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
“Mesmerizing and inspirational.”—Judy Batalion, New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Days The incredible true story of two Holocaust survivors who fell in love in Auschwitz, only to be separated upon liberation and lead remarkable lives apart following the war—and then find each other again more than 70 years later. Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia were captivated by each other from the moment they first exchanged glances across the work floor. It was the beginning of a love story that could have happened anywhere. Except for one difference: this romance was unfolding in history’s most notorious death camp, between two young prisoners whose budding intimacy risked dooming them if they were caught. Incredibly, David and Zippi survived for years beneath the ash-choked skies of Auschwitz. Under the protection of their fellow inmates, their romance grew and deepened, even as their brushes with death mounted and David’s luck in particular seemed close to running out. As the war’s end finally approached and the time came for them to leave the camp, David and Zippi made plans to meet again. But neither of them could imagine how long their reunion would take or how many lives they would live in the interim. They had no inkling, either, of the betrayals that would await them along the way. But David did suspect that Zippi harbored a secret—one that could explain the mystery of his survival all those years ago. An unbelievable tale of romance, sacrifice, loss, and resilience, Lovers in Auschwitz is a saga of two young people who found themselves trapped inside a waking nightmare of the Nazis’ creation, yet who nevertheless discovered a love that sustained them through history’s darkest hour.

The Sound of Hope

The Sound of Hope PDF Author: Kellie D. Brown
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476670560
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Since ancient times, music has demonstrated the incomparable ability to touch and resonate with the human spirit as a tool for communication, emotional expression, and as a medium of cultural identity. During World War II, Nazi leadership recognized the power of music and chose to harness it with malevolence, using its power to push their own agenda and systematically stripping it away from the Jewish people and other populations they sought to disempower. But music also emerged as a counterpoint to this hate, withstanding Nazi attempts to exploit or silence it. Artistic expression triumphed under oppressive regimes elsewhere as well, including the horrific siege of Leningrad and in Japanese internment camps in the Pacific. The oppressed stubbornly clung to music, wherever and however they could, to preserve their culture, to uplift the human spirit and to triumph over oppression, even amid incredible tragedy and suffering. This volume draws together the musical connections and individual stories from this tragic time through scholarly literature, diaries, letters, memoirs, compositions, and art pieces. Collectively, they bear witness to the power of music and offer a reminder to humanity of the imperative each faces to not only remember, but to prevent another such cataclysm.

Alma Rose

Alma Rose PDF Author: Richard Newman
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781574670851
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Presents the story of a woman who saved the lives of many Jews who were members in her orchestra in Auschwitz.

Loving Music Till it Hurts

Loving Music Till it Hurts PDF Author: William Cheng
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190620137
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Loving Music Till It Hurts explores how people's intense love and protectiveness of music can lead to interpersonal conflicts, societal injustices, and violence. But how might we love music, even embrace it as vital to human thriving, without weaponizing this love? What can we do when loving music and loving people seem at odds?

Tango of Death: The Creation of a Holocaust Legend

Tango of Death: The Creation of a Holocaust Legend PDF Author: Willem de Haan
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004525076
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
This book traces the origins of the legend that Jewish musicians in concentration camps were forced to play a Tango of Death at the gas chambers and shows how in this legend the actual history is hidden, distorted, or even lost altogether.

Playing for Time

Playing for Time PDF Author: Arthur Miller
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9781854590961
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
The extraordinary story of the women's orchestra in Auschwitz, originally filmed for television with Vanessa Redgrave, and adapted for the stage by Miller himself. Fania Fénelon, a Parisian singer, is arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. There, she finds herself swept into the orchestra, composed entirely of female prisoners and founded as entertainment for the camp commandants. As long as the orchestra continues to find favour, its members will be spared the gas chambers. But Fania is struggling with the corruption of what she holds most sacred in the world - her music - and the morals of the orchestra members are being ground down every day. They are, quite literally, playing for time. Arthur Miller's stageplay Playing for Time is adapted from the 1980 CBS television film, written by Miller himself, and based on acclaimed musician Fania Fénelon's autobiography The Musicians of Auschwitz. The television film starred Vanessa Redgrave as Fénelon. The stageplay was first staged at 1-Act Theatre, San Francisco, in 1985.

After Daybreak

After Daybreak PDF Author: Ben Shephard
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0307424634
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
“I find it hard even now to get into focus all these horrors, my mind is really quite incapable of taking in everything I saw because it was all so completely foreign to everything I had previously believed or thought possible.” British Major Ben Barnett’s words echoed the sentiments shared by medical students, Allied soldiers, members of the clergy, ambulance drivers, and relief workers who found themselves utterly unprepared to comprehend, much less tend to, the indescribable trauma of those who survived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British in April 1945 was a defining point in history: the moment the world finally became inescapably aware of the Holocaust. But what happened after Belsen was liberated is still a matter of dispute. Was it an epic of medical heroism or the culmination of thirteen years of indifference to the fate of Europe’s Jews? This startling investigation by acclaimed documentary filmmaker and historian Ben Shephard draws on an extraordinary range of materials–contemporary diaries, military documents, and survivors’ testimonies–to reconstruct six weeks at Belsen beginning on April 15, 1945, and reveals what actually caused the post-liberation deaths of nearly 14,000 concentration camp inmates who might otherwise have lived. Why did it take almost two weeks to organize a proper medical response? Why were the medical teams sent to Belsen so poorly equipped? Why, when specialists did arrive, did they get so much of the medicine plain wrong? For the first time, Shephard explores the humanitarian and medical issues surrounding the liberation of the camp and provides a detailed, illuminating account that is far more complex than had been previously revealed. This gripping book confronts the terrifying aftermath of war with questions that still haunt us today.