Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s memoir traces survival from Nazi deportation to a life in music

Family letters and the closing of escape routes

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s memoir begins not in a camp but in the domestic world that was steadily collapsing around her family in Germany. Drawing on chatty letters and recollections, she describes her father, a distinguished lawyer, trying and failing to arrange emigration in the 1930s as anti-Jewish persecution intensified. The book establishes early on how long her family tried to outrun events before they overtook them.

That effort ended in 1942, when her parents were deported, along with her grandmother. In Martin Gilbert’s preface, the late British historian makes plain the fate that followed: “The destination was unknown; they were never heard of again.” For readers, that framing matters because it places the memoir in the larger history of German Jewish families whose attempts to leave were obstructed until it was too late.

Arrest, Auschwitz and a cello

Still teenagers, Lasker-Wallfisch and her sister Renate attempted to flee by train to France, but they were arrested. After her release from prison in 1943, she was sent to Auschwitz, where one unexpected fact altered her chances of survival: she could play a musical instrument. The memoir emphasizes how improbable that advantage was, given that she had not touched a cello for nearly two years.

She recalls auditioning by trying to play the slow movement of the Boccherini Concerto, then joining the camp orchestra. Her account underlines the bizarre logic of the camp system, in which musical ability could mean the difference between life and death. As she writes, there was “no real danger” that she would fail, because the orchestra had not yet had a bass instrument. The passage captures both the absurdity and the terror of survival under Nazi rule.

Bergen-Belsen and liberation

In 1944, as the Red Army approached, Lasker-Wallfisch was transferred to Bergen-Belsen. Her description of the camp is stark and unsparing: starvation, typhus, dirt, lice, no hygiene, no ambulance and no medicines. She recalls going without bread for fourteen days and surviving on beets mixed with unsalted water. The plainness of the language makes the conditions feel even harsher.

Liberation finally came in 1945, after three years of hope. The memoir does not treat that moment as a neat ending, but it does mark the end of one sustained struggle for survival. In the context of Holocaust memoir writing, these scenes sit alongside other eyewitness accounts that document not only mass murder but also the daily mechanics of degradation and endurance.

A new life in Britain

The book then turns toward what happened after the war. At first, Lasker-Wallfisch was denied entry to Britain, but she eventually succeeded in making a new home there. She went on to enjoy a long and successful career in music, and she writes that she has never regretted coming to England. That statement gives the memoir its final note of hard-won stability without erasing the losses that preceded it.

For readers, that arc is significant because it connects the history of displacement with postwar reinvention. The memoir is not only a survival narrative; it is also a record of what it meant for a young Jewish refugee to build a life in a country that was not immediately open to her.

Why the memoir matters now

The book arrives as another addition to the body of Holocaust testimony that continues to shape historical memory and public understanding. Its importance lies partly in the details Lasker-Wallfisch preserves: the letters, the deportations, the failed escape attempt, the camp orchestra, the transfer to another camp as the war turned, and the eventual resettlement in Britain. Together, those elements give the memoir both historical value and emotional force.

Most of all, the book stands as a survivor’s account told from the perspective of someone who lived to become a musician, a witness and a settled member of British life. Lasker-Wallfisch closes on gratitude, saying she has made her home in England and has “a great deal to be thankful for.” That perspective, set against the destruction recorded earlier in the memoir, helps explain why her story remains resonant: it shows both the scale of what was taken and the difficult possibility of rebuilding after catastrophe.