Radio Speech of Holocaust Survivor Anita Lasker after Liberation from Bergen-Belsen- 16 April 1945

Name: Radio Speech of Holocaust Survivor Anita Lasker after Liberation from Bergen-Belsen- 16 April 1945
Uploaded: 2024-01-27T12:05:47.195Z
Duration: 3 min 56 s
Channel: The Saga of Scribe

The Saga of Scribe

1 Video View·Jan 27, 2024

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, born on 17th July 1925, is one of the last survivors of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz and generally a well-known Holocaust survivor. Born in Breslau as the daughter of a lawyer and a violinist, she had two sisters, Marianne and Renate, and her family was Jewish, although not practicing, she herself recalled growing up “non-Jewish”. When Hitler came to power in 1933, her father believed the family to be safe from persecution, as he fought in WWI and earned the Iron Cross. When the family realized the severity of the situation in 1938, her parents tried to get the children out of Germany, but only her oldest sister, Marianne, was able to go to Great Britain in late 1939.

In 1942, Lasker’s parents where deported to the Izbica ghetto in Poland; they never returned and where probably either murdered or died of disease. Anita and her older sister, Renate, where put into an orphanage and forced to work in a paper factory. In said factory, French POWs were also forced to work, and since she spoke French, she was able to communicate with them; she and her sister forged documents to help them escape to France. She and her sister ultimately also forged documents for themselves and tried to escape to France, but they were stopped last minute at the Breslau train station by the Gestapo.

They were arrested and tried in June 1943 as criminals, something that, as she later recalled, was actually beneficial for them. Being a common criminal was better than being a Jews, because criminals were sent to prison, not concentration camps.
Her sister was sentenced to 3,5 years Zuchthaus (a type of harsher prison sentence, with heavy labor duties), while Anita was sentenced to 1,5 years in prison.

She was nevertheless sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in December 1943, however not as a Jew, but as a convicted criminal, meaning she was not subjected to the selection process. In Auschwitz, because she could play the Cello, she was made a member of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, something that probably helped her survive. Her sister was later also deported to Auschwitz. In November 1944, with both sisters being sick, they were sent to Bergen-Belsen, where they both survived, weakened and close to death, until the British liberated the camp in April 1945.

In 1946, she emigrated to Great Britain, where she was one of the founders of the English Chamber Orchestra in 1948 and married the pianist Peter Wallfisch (1924-1993), who was also from Breslau and escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Palestina in 1938.

She returned to Germany for the first time in 1994 and held presentations and talked to school children about her experience in Auschwitz, and gave a speech about the Holocaust in the German parliament in 2018.
She still lives in London.

This video is a speech of hers, given a day after the liberation, on April 16th, 1945. It was broadcasted on the German service of the BBC.
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Subtitles made by me.

This is Anita Lasker, a German Jew, speaking. I have been in prison with my sister for three years. I'm a political prisoner. I helped French prisoners of war across the border. We were first locked up in prison. My sister was sentenced to three and a half years in Zuchthaus and I was sentenced to one and a half years in prison. After a year and a half, we were both taken to the most terrible concentration camp: Auschwitz. I would first like to say a few words about Auschwitz: The Auschwitz prisoners, the few who remained, all fear that the world will not believe what had happened there. There, healthy people were thrown into the fire alive. My barrack was about 20 meters from the chimney, from one of the five chimneys that were there. I saw everything with my own eyes. A doctor and a warden stood at the ramp when the transports arrived, and they were sorted before our eyes. Meaning the age and state of health were asked. The unknowing new arrivals tend to state some form of illness and thus sign their death warrant. Children and the elderly were particularly targeted. Right - left - right - left. Right is for living, left is to the chimney. During the night, the fire burned as high as the sky. Children were thrown in alive, and out of humanity the others were gassed, i.e. tranquilized. But if there was too much work, they were all burned alive. We could hear the screams all the way to our barracks. Music was always played to go with it. I myself was in the orchestra. Music was played to the most terrible things. Maria Mandel, Margot Drechsel and Commander Kramer, who was also the camp commander in Bergen-Belsen, earned special recognition for what they did to the Jews in Auschwitz. After a year in Auschwitz - my sister and I were very ill and only narrowly escaped death - we were sent to Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen, which is now known as the most terrible concentration camp. And it comes nowhere near Auschwitz. There is no chimney in Bergen-Belsen. This means that the misery is not burned, as it was in Auschwitz. The people here were starving. Here was typhus, here was dirt, lice, no hygiene, no ambulance, no medication. We went without bread for 14 days. Food was turnips with water, without salt. Finally on the 15th came the liberation. The liberation we have been hoping for, for three years. We still can't understand it. We still believe we are dreaming. We see the English driving through the camp: People who mean no harm to us. People who want to help us. We cannot understand it. They brought water, water! We were without water for three weeks. People have died of thirst. This morning another comrade of mine died in the face of liberation. My parents also died. But we are now looking forward, we are full of hope, full of new courage. We are liberated. Hopefully we will see some relatives again after all.