Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a cellist. Her musical talent has made her one of the most distinguished members of the English Chamber Orchestra, with whom she's toured all over the world.

Presenter0:38

Until the early eighties, however, there was one country which she always refused to visit. That country was Germany, where, at the age of eighteen, she found herself a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz. Because she could play the cello, she survived. She was moved to Belsen, where she almost didn't.

Presenter0:55

Hers is a remarkable story which remained untold until she decided to reveal it herself, nearly fifty years after the war had ended. Through music she's written we were able to raise ourselves high above the inferno of Auschwitz, into spheres where we could not be touched by the degradation of concentration camp existence. She is Anita

Presenter1:17

It it's a simple truth, isn't it, Anita, that if you hadn't played the cello, you wouldn't be here today.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch1:24

Yes.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch1:25

I mean it's a simple fact that

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch1:27

We were needed at the time. They wanted an orchestra, so they needed the people who played in that orchestra.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch1:34

So it would have been a little bit foolish to stick her straight in the gas chamber.

Presenter1:38

But when you arrived in that camp and you told somebody, I think on your first visit.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch1:42

Oh yes, that's right. You somebody said, Oh yes, oh fantastic. You play the cello, there's an orchestra here. Yes, you'll be saved.

Presenter1:48

Did you understand what it meant?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch1:49

No, I had no idea. Well, I didn't exactly come with high hopes into Auschwitz, because I knew what was going on there.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch1:56

But uh

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch1:57

You know, it was very nice to hear that

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:00

that it was a good thing that I played the cello. I only mentioned it really accidentally.

Presenter2:04

How big was the orchestra? How good was it?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:07

We were roughly about forty people. How good was it is very difficult for me to say in retrospect. It wasn't as bad as it should have been, considering that hardly anybody

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:16

But was really a trained musician?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:19

But Alma Rose being Alma Rose.

Presenter2:22

She was the leader.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:23

She was the conductor, yes. She had such enormously high standards.

Presenter2:28

But do you think she understood, perhaps, that that this was the salvation of all of you?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:33

I don't think it was motivated by fear.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:36

By fear of the SS. If we don't play well, they'll put us in a gas chamber. I don't think so.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:41

It was an escape somehow into excellence.

Presenter2:44

Hmm.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:45

I mean, it sounds totally ridiculous in the context, but, um

Presenter2:48

But it was the same for you in a sense, wasn't it? That that that playing the cello gave you an identity which all of those thousands of other people didn't have. Yeah.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:55

I wasn't just a number, but one could actually say

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch2:58

The cellist.

Presenter3:00

But who did you play for? When?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:02

Well, we had a a job, a prescribed job. We played uh marches in the morning for the people who walked out of the camp, and there were thousands and thousands who walked out to walk in work into the fact in the factories. We played concerts on Sundays between the two camps. You know, there was an A and B camp in Birkenau.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:19

The SS would come or they would come into the block and

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:22

Ask for certain pieces or whatever.

Presenter3:24

And you you played, did you not, for the infamous doctor Mengeler?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:28

Yeah.

Presenter3:29

How did you feel when you played for such people? I mean, did you have any feelings or did you just go?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:34

Do you know, I don't think we gave ourselves time to feel anything.

Presenter3:37

'Cause you knew what they were doing, did you?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:39

Of course we knew what they were doing.

Presenter3:41

How could you entertain them really is I suppose what one's asking?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:41

Drink

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:43

Yeah, but what was the alternative? Yeah, you didn't have a choice.

Presenter3:45

We didn't touch.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:46

Yeah.

Presenter3:48

Tell me about your first record.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch3:50

Well, my first record, which brings me back to my youth, is really um Death and the Maiden, because we played a lot of chamber music at home. My mother was a very, very good violinist, and I remember with special affection uh Schubert's Death and the Maiden and uh how I loved playing the cello variation in the slow movement.

Presenter5:10

Part of the second movement of Schubert's string quartet in D minor, Death and the Maiden, played by the Amadeus Quartet, which um you played, Anita Laska Welfish, with your mother as a girl. You've been off to Berlin, I think, to study the children.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch5:22

Yes, because there came a point when, in the town where I come from, Breslau, there weren't any people left who would teach me, Jewish teachers.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch5:32

And it was extremely dangerous for a non-Jewish German to be seen to teach a Jewish child, so

Presenter5:39

This was when in the thirties.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch5:41

That was would have been in thirty eight, thirty nine, yes.

Presenter5:43

But we know that.

Presenter5:44

And your father was a lawyer?

Presenter5:46

I mean, obviously the whole family would have been aware, for the reason you've just said, not least, uh uh of this growth of anti-Semitism. Why on earth didn't he organize you all out of there?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch5:55

Well, I think the fact that he was a lawyer was a very great hindrance because for a lawyer it is very difficult to emigrate with a family of three children.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch6:05

What are you going to do in a foreign country where you haven't studied the the law of that country?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch6:11

I think that probably kept him.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch6:14

Had he known what is ahead, he wouldn't have cared less whether he did.

Presenter6:18

So you you all stayed except for an older sister?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch6:20

Also my older sister who just uh left. Yeah.

Presenter6:23

But you lived in in very straightened circumstances or eventually.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch6:25

Eventually, yes. Eventually we had to leave uh our flat and we moved in with an aunt and

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch6:31

Uh we lived on top of one another till nineteen forty two.

Presenter6:35

And you didn't go to school because then there were no schools

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch6:37

Well, the schools had sh closed by then and we were made to go uh to do war work in a factory.

Presenter6:42

One sort of

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch6:42

Paper factory. I'm a great expert in making toilet paper.

Presenter6:48

And then finally in April 1942 they came, Field Parents.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch6:52

They came from my parents and but we stayed behind because we weren't on the list.

Presenter6:58

Did your parents know that this was the end, or?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:02

Well, I think, you know, looking back, I think my father knew quite well because obviously we wanted to stay together and we wanted to go with them.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:11

And my father said, Well, I will go to the Gestapo and ask whether you can come.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:17

It sounds a little bit ridiculous now in retrospect. And uh he left the house and he came back a few minutes later and said, I'm sorry you can't come.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:24

Because where we are going you get there soon enough.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:28

If I look back on that situation now, I'm pretty sure that my father knew exactly where they were going.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:37

It's unthinkable, really, what you feel as a parent.

Presenter7:40

You would have been sixteen at the time.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:41

Yeah.

Presenter7:43

Did you ever find out exactly what happened to them?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:45

Not exactly, but pretty exactly, that they were sent to a place called Ispica.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:51

And um

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch7:52

The method of killing people there was that they had to dig their graves and fire shot into the graves. But I have no actual hundred percent

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:01

Confirmation of that, but

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:03

I can well believe it, that's what happened.

Presenter8:05

So you two girls, you and your

Presenter8:08

Sister, we're left alone with your grandmother.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:10

Yeah.

Presenter8:10

And then eventually she was taken to

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:12

She was taken as well, yes.

Presenter8:13

How did you two girls survive?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:16

We still remained in the flat, but we didn't stay there very long because we were miners.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:22

and we had to leave the flat and go into an orphanage.

Presenter8:25

But eventually you you tried to make a dash for France, but you were caught, you were imprisoned, and finally

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:29

Yeah.

Presenter8:32

You and your sister were separated and and you were sent off to Auschwitz.

Presenter8:36

Um let's pause in your story there and have some more music. Tell me about the second piece.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:41

Mortest on Giovanni.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:44

It brings back wonderful memories of Daniel Barn Bohm in Edinburgh.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:48

I was so unbelievably impressed by it. It is the most wonderful piece of music.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:54

And Daniel of course did it most beautifully.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch8:57

So it was very difficult to choose a record, but I thought Don Giovanni uh covers a marvelous bit of Mozart at least.

Presenter10:01

Part of the final act, the hell scene of Mozart's Don Giovanni, sung by Roger Sawyer, Geraint Evans, and the Scottish Opera Chorus, with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Presenter10:13

What were your

Presenter10:14

May I ask this, what were your first impressions of Auschwitz, Anita? W you know, when you recall that moment, what images come into your mind?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:21

People in black capes

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:24

And dogs barking.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:27

And a lot of noise, screaming.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:30

And a horrendous smell.

Presenter10:32

And you had to file in and very soon afterwards your head was shaved and you were tattooed with a number.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:37

Yeah.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:38

Uh

Presenter10:39

Yeah.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:39

But

Presenter10:39

On your own.

Presenter10:40

It's still there, I presume.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:42

Oh, yes.

Presenter10:44

It was a vast camp, but

Presenter10:46

I take it everybody knew what was going on, that people were being systematically gassed.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:48

People would be

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:50

Yeah.

Presenter10:50

You actually lived, didn't you, in a hut opposite the gas chamber?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:54

Yeah.

Presenter10:54

So you saw them.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:55

Absolutely. I mean, I saw the the people walking in

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch10:59

There's no secret knowing what

Presenter11:01

They were going in top

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:01

Uh

Presenter11:01

Uh

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:01

Well.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:03

You know how they arranged it? They said that you're going to have a bath.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:07

and they had special hooks with numbers on, and told the people to put their clothes neatly so they can find them again, and

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:15

You know, and you like to think that

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:18

Well, if that's the case, then everything must be okay.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:23

So the the actual uh cleverness behind it is is mind-boggling.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:29

Because can you imagine what would happen if thousands of people suddenly started revolting like they did in some places? But I mean, there was.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:38

They were led like

Presenter11:39

Like sheep.

Presenter11:41

So you lived because you knew um those of you who

Presenter11:45

went on surviving you. You lived, therefore, with with constant fear.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:50

Somehow you come to terms with eventually they're going to get you.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:56

But whilst they haven't got you

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch11:58

You just carry on.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:00

I think one of the ingredients were of survival was to be with other people.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:05

I think anybody on their own

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:08

Really didn't have a chance.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:11

But

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:12

The fact that we were an orchestra and I mean, I'm still see the people that have they're still alive now, we still

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:20

Keep in touch, you know, and we really looked after each other and bullied each other and

Presenter12:24

So you bullied each other anyway. We bullied each other anybody.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:26

We bullied each other anybody you could see if people started perhaps not to wash every day or

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:33

Well, you can see when people start giving up.

Presenter12:35

And did your religion help? I mean, was there any room for God?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:37

No, no, I I don't have that problem. To me I don't think of God as uh as a man sitting up there.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:45

Making sure that everything is all right, because everything was all wrong.

Presenter12:49

But your faith was in other people, as you say.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:51

My faith is in other people, yes. Not that I have that much faith in other people, but

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch12:58

somehow in some something bigger than us.

Presenter13:02

You you do believe there's there's something bigger. There's some ultimate

Presenter13:06

good that will triumph over evil do.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch13:09

Well, I hope.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch13:11

I hope.

Presenter13:12

Tell me about your third record.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch13:15

My third record is the Matthew Passion. To me the Matthew Passion with Karl Richter is the most impressive among the hundreds of Matthew Passions that I've played.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch13:25

And I chose this particular chorus because to me there is so much consolation in that music, you know, after all the big drama that's happened.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch13:34

I find it very consoling. That's why I love this particularly.

Presenter14:39

The chorus Wirzetzen und Smittreinen Nieder from Bach St Matthew Passion with the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra conducted by Karl Richter.

Presenter14:48

So you were in Auschwitz, Anita, for nearly a year, and your sister had turned up too, and you were able to help her survive, and then one day uh you were lined up and put in a cattle truck for Belsen. What did you think that meant?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:02

We thought, well, this

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:04

Probably means that we'll survive. At least we didn't go into the gas chamber.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:08

That's all we thought. We were glad to be leaving Auschwitz, I can assure you.

Presenter15:12

But you didn't really know where you were going.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:13

We didn't know where we were going and when we d did find out, I don't know how, somebody said, Oh, Belsnow, that's a very good place, that is a convalescent camp.

Presenter15:23

What it wasn't, of course, was it was an extermination camp.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:26

It wasn't actually an extermination camp. It was a camp where people perished. There were were no gas chambers there. No need for gas chambers. You just died of disease, of starvation.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:37

Yeah.

Presenter15:37

How close did you come to perishing?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:40

Well, I think another week and we probably wouldn't have made it, because there was no food left, no food and no water.

Presenter15:47

But as I understand it, there were in fact warehouses full of the stuff. It was just locked up. Yeah. Blankets that might have kept you warm. Mm-hmm.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:49

Yeah.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:53

Yeah.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch15:54

Yeah.

Speaker 115:54

Yeah.

Presenter15:56

You must have asked yourself suffering all of that.

Presenter16:00

You know, how could these people I mean, the people who were in charge of you were, before all this started, quite ordinary people.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch16:06

If you met these people in the street, you wouldn't know what they were up to. I think this is the most frightening thing about the whole event, is that you don't have to be a monster.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch16:15

to be able to descend to that sort of depth.

Presenter16:19

How does it happen then? Can you explain?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch16:22

Well, I think enough clever propaganda, brainwashing.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch16:28

And you know the people that we're told.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch16:31

that the Jews are subhuman.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch16:34

And I must also add that I don't want to forget the many, many non-Jewish people who also perished. I think it's important to bring this in.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch16:43

But if you were fed with your mother's milk, that Jews are subhuman, and then you reduce them to subhumans, which we were, then it's quite easy, actually.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch16:54

To hate them and to say, Oh, well, if they look like that is dreadful.

Presenter16:57

Uh

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch16:57

We do away with them.

Presenter16:59

Tell me about record number four.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch17:01

Record number four has to do with Benjamin Britton, who played a very important part.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch17:07

In my musical career, he and Yodi Menouin came in nineteen forty five to Belsen on a sort of tour where they played in in liberated camps. And I went to this concert.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch17:22

And I wrote a letter about this concert to my cousin the next day.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch17:27

And I kept talking about this pianist.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch17:30

And years later I found out that this pianist was in fact Benjamin Britten.

Speaker 117:35

The f

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch17:36

And then I was very privileged.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch17:38

With the English chamber for years and years to play in the Arlborough Festival.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch17:43

And I remember particularly recording the Frankbridge variations.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch17:48

And that we recorded the Moto Perpeto in one single take, which is totally unheard of. But I can see it now, you're sitting there. Well, that was fantastic. That's it.

Presenter18:57

One of Benjamin Britton's variations on a theme of Frank Bridge, the Motto Popetto, played by the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Britton.

Presenter19:05

Tell me about the liberation, Anita Daskavalfish, April 15th, 1945. Could could you take on board the full reality that it was over? It was really over.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch19:17

with difficulty. It was almost too much to take on board. It sort of seeped in slowly, really, what what was happening. And the fact that people in uniform, this time British uniforms,

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch19:30

We're not your enemies. I mean, it takes quite a bit of getting used to if you've lived for years and years thinking that anybody in uniform is s is going to be after you.

Presenter19:39

So you were suspicious of them in a sense? And they were so appalled by the rest of the world.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch19:43

The best sort of thing.

Presenter19:45

That it must

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch19:46

They couldn't believe it. They couldn't believe it. I mean, I've spoken to people who've actually

Presenter19:46

Yeah.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch19:51

been there in the in the first days.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch19:54

It was the smell, really, that was so awful, because by the time we were liberated we were surrounded by dead bodies who hadn't been buried, and it was very hot by then.

Presenter20:03

But you were immune to the music.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:04

We didn't we just moved about it. It didn't it's totally meaningless. It became totally meaningless.

Presenter20:09

Hmm.

Presenter20:10

And then I think terrible things happened, didn't they? Because then the food was discovered and then people ate too much too quickly so normal.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:15

You late to my

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:16

The normal reaction you see of people who see starving people is to give them something to eat without realizing that in fact.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:23

A tin of corned beef is not the food for somebody who hasn't been eating.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:27

So a lot of mistakes were made, but, you know, not not with intent.

Presenter20:28

Do you know?

Presenter20:32

And you subsequently gave evidence at the Luneberg trials uh against your jailers, all all of whom, the ones on trial anyway, were were eventually hanged.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:35

True.

Speaker 120:38

Yeah.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:38

Wait.

Speaker 120:38

Uh

Presenter20:41

And yet you've called those trials a huge farce. They made you very angry. Why?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:45

Bye.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:46

Because you can't apply the concept of British law to things that happened there.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch20:52

What particularly struck me at the time is the questions I was asked, like in a proper trial. You asked questions. Did you see?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch21:00

So-and-so kill somebody? And you'd say yes.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch21:04

Uh what day was it? What time was it? I mean, these are ridiculous questions.

Presenter21:09

You couldn't possibly

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch21:09

Yeah.

Presenter21:09

For first

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch21:09

For first of all, I couldn't possibly know and what relevance has it got anyway.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch21:13

We were talking about millions of murdered people. I mean, I stood in that uh witness box and I felt like a liar because I couldn't say at what time so-and-so had killed somebody else.

Presenter21:23

And what about today? What what do you say to those people who believe that the hunt for former Nazi criminals should be ended, that that, you know, if they're found they don't agree with it?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch21:31

Well I don't agree with you.

Presenter21:32

Gold.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch21:32

I don't agree with what you mean too old. Nobody's ever too old. You know, and I'm not talking out of a desire for revenge. But what example do we set the next generation if we actually say

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch21:44

Well, you've murdered thousands of people, but now so many years have gone by, so let's forget it.

Presenter21:50

Tell me about record number five.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch21:52

I used to be a regular visitor to Jacqueline Dupre when she was very ill and we always used to play records when I sat with her and it was always a Schumann concerto.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch22:04

So I think of Jacqueline Dupre, and I also think of my son.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch22:09

I met after deliberation.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch22:12

An Italian cellist by the name of Giuseppe Salmi, who was liberated in an Italian prison camp.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch22:18

Then we formed ourselves into a little concert party.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch22:22

and played all over the place.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch22:24

And uh of course the Italian prisoners weren't treated as well as we were treated. So poor old Giuseppe Selmi looked an absolute disaster. I mean he was just had his army uniform on and uh he had nothing. So I used to bring him all sorts of fantastic luxuries like socks and underwear and he started giving me cello lessons again. And then he was sent home and I eventually disappeared somewhere else. And years went by. By that time I have a son who is a cellist and he won a prize in Italy.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch22:57

Part of the prize was to play the Schumann concerto with the Florence orchestra. He knew the people in the orchestra and there was a second time he played with them and he realized there was a different cellist sitting there from the previous time.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch23:09

So he introduced himself, and then Selmy said, My God, you are the son of Anita, and all this underwear and sock business came out and

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch23:17

Selmi was a lovely man, very bullient, and he apparently the rehearsal was totally disturbed because he had to tell everybody what happened to the La Madre who's given him all these things, you know, and he will be eternally grateful. He was a lovely man. And they played the Schumann concerto, the slow movement, and apparently Selmy said he was so moved he cried because it's a lovely cello duet, you see, in the slow movement.

Presenter24:34

Part of the slow movement of Schumann's cello concerto in A minor, opus a hundred and twenty nine, played by Jacqueline Dupre with the new Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Presenter24:45

How you came to this country, Anita, is another long story, because you had to go on living at Belson for nine months after the liberation, but came you did, and you began to make a life here in London, not without huge problems, poverty not least.

Presenter24:59

And then at the age of twenty two, twenty three you became a professional musician and joined the Goldsboro Orchestra, which was to become the English Chamber Orchestra. And you were also to go to Paris and meet a young man whom you'd known at school called the Fat

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch25:11

Boy.

Presenter25:12

Tell me about that.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch25:13

I said to a colleague of mine casually that I'm going to Paris, and he said to me, Oh, there is somebody there who you should know from your school.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch25:23

Peter Valfisher said, Oh yes, the fat boy.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch25:26

Who played the piano. Yes, he's now or lives in Paris. He's studying there.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch25:31

So I took his address, not really thinking I was going to look him up. But there I was in Paris, and one day I passed the street where Peter Balfisch was staying, and I thought, well, I might as well go in here.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch25:44

And there he was.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch25:45

Pat? No, not Pat any longer, no, because in the meantime he's

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch25:50

He didn't have all that much to eat either.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch25:53

And we said hello, remember? Oh, yeah, of course, because we used to play uh together at at school, at school concerts. I still have a programme where we both appear at aged eleven.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch26:02

and we got on rather well.

Presenter26:05

And eventually you married. Eventually you married. You have two children, yes. Your son Raphael, of course, is is now a well-known cellist. Did you bring them up, your children, speaking German?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch26:06

Eventually they married.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch26:16

No. I have to admit that it would have been totally impossible for me to speak German to my children.

Presenter26:21

So you didn't speak it to your husband either?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch26:24

I can't really tell you what I spoke to my husband, how we spoke to each other. I think it was a total mixture of languages.

Presenter26:30

But

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch26:30

Do you d

Presenter26:31

didn't know any English before. No, but I picked it up very quickly.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch26:32

No, but I picked it up very quickly.

Presenter26:38

Yes.

Presenter26:39

And life since then has been kind to you, I think.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch26:42

Very kind to me. And in the meantime, I can speak German again. But, you know, in forty-five, forty-six, it's a

Presenter26:46

Forty five foot

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch26:49

You know, I mean now things of course fifty years later it's different.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch26:53

Record number six brings back a very happy time we had in Switzerland when we played for the conductor scores of Rafael Kubelik.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch27:02

I remember he was a very sad man then because he just lost his wife.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch27:08

We had three weeks there of conductor's course, which was very interesting. And when that was finished, he said.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch27:14

Have we got the music of the Tvorak serenade anywhere? And we had it. He said, Just let's play it for fun. Professional musicians very rarely play things for fun, and I shall never forget that. It was so wonderful to play something just for fun, with Kubelik, who is such a wonderful conductor.

Presenter28:27

Part of Vorjak's serenade for strings in E major, opus twenty two, played by the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Raphael Kubelig.

Presenter28:35

You also felt, Anita, for several decades that you could never again set foot on German soil, as I said in the introduction, and you didn't, and nobody could possibly blame you. But can you?

Presenter28:47

Again, describe to me why not. I mean, have you found the words that

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch28:52

I think the simplest way to explain it be when people tried to persuade me to to break my vow was that it would actually be possible that I meet the very person who had murdered my parents.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch29:04

It could be the the newspaper vendor, for all I know.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch29:08

And anybody at the wrong age or white hair would be suspect. I mean, I would no, it was not possible for me to go back. But in the end, you did?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch29:19

You mustn't forget there is a passage of time which does of course has a lot to do with it.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch29:25

You see, I go now to Germany

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch29:28

When there is a purpose, you know, I've been invited to conferences and stuff like that, where you meet um young German historians.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch29:37

And I think this is something that I need to do now. It's a sense of duty. Absolutely. It's a sense of duty.

Presenter29:43

You went back, I know, to Belsen. Have you been back to the site of Auschwitz?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch29:48

Yes. I've been twice to Auschwitz.

Presenter29:51

Does it help in any way? Or is it just something you were asked to do and you've done it?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch29:57

You know, I don't need any help in that sense. I'm way past that.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:01

It's curiosity really that makes me go to these places, just to see what's happened there.

Presenter30:06

You were again naturally full of of of hatred, as you said, of of the Germans immediately after the war. I think you you wrote to your sister in England that you hated them without exception. What's happened to that hatred? What happens to that with the passage of time?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:18

I think one has to be a bit careful with hate.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:21

I'm a very positive person anyway. I wasn't going to let the Germans who have destroyed my family destroy me.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:29

Totally.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:31

As a person who is embittered and full of hatred which would

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:35

hinder my development as a you know, I wanted to live really, life to the full.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:42

And if you have this poison of hatred in you, you

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:45

It's it's totally destructive.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:49

So I can't say that I hate the Germans when I can't possibly hate somebody who was born in nineteen forty-five.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:56

Number seven.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch30:58

I've chose the Brahms F major sonata played by uh my husband and my son.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch31:03

That also brings back a most peculiar event actually because I was given

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch31:09

The record of Casals and Hoszovsky playing the Brahm sonatas.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch31:14

When I was about eleven,

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch31:15

And

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch31:16

I didn't like the pieces.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch31:18

I absolutely hated them and I thought this is terrible. I mean I'm supposed to be a musician and I hate this.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch31:24

So I made myself listen to them over and over again, till they began to make sense to me. Of course it is the most wonderful music, but at the age of eleven I don't think you understand that sort of music.

Presenter32:41

The opening of Brahm's sonata for cello and piano in F major, opus ninety nine, played by Raphael Valfisch and Peter Valfisch, the son and late husband of my castaway Anita Lasker Valfish.

Presenter32:54

Finally, Anita, pressed by people over the last few years to tell your story. That's exactly what you have done. But do I get the impression?

Presenter33:01

That you were worried that the truth wouldn't live if you didn't, that people really would stop believing it ever happened.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch33:10

I tell you why what I think is the big danger, that the Holocaust is a sort of happening of the past. You know, it happened many years ago to people that one doesn't really know.

Presenter33:22

Yeah.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch33:24

Yes, it's almost like yeah, fiction is a drama. Oh, it's gas chambers, how terrible, you know. But I think why it is important, I think, to personalize stories is that I think it's impossible.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch33:35

for people to really identify with six thousand six million dead people.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch33:42

You know, it is impossible to actually visualize. And I think the only way to perhaps make it uh understandable is

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch33:50

for people to identify with people who were in it and tell the tale. Especially young people, you see. I do quite a lot of talking at schools to people who were are now my age that I was then. And I say, you see you sitting at this desk here and you're probably very cross about your Latin exam or whatever.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch34:08

But imagine yourself in a situation where you come home to your normal tea and you find your parents have gone and you have to start battling yourself and you don't know what's happening the next day.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch34:18

You know, then people start to understand perhaps a bit better.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch34:22

Last record.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch34:23

The last record is uh the Beethoven Opress Hundred and Eleven played by my husband.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch34:28

It was one of the last things he did before he had a stroke and could no longer play.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch34:34

And I remember when he first learned the piece many years ago. He worked for months and months and months before he actually played it for the first time at the Wigmer Hall. And uh a friend of mine to whom I talked yesterday said, you know, I shall never forget this performance. It was so marvellous.

Presenter35:50

The opening of the slow movement of Beethoven's piano sonata, Opus 1011, played by Peter Valfisch. So now you have to choose just one of those records, Anita.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch36:02

I will choose the Obus hundred and eleven.

Presenter36:05

That one.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch36:06

I think I will choose that one, yes.

Presenter36:08

What about your book?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch36:10

I had to think very hard about that. You know, I suffer from a terrible imperative complex as far as my education is concerned. No, h hardly having gone to

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch36:18

School certainly not got any

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch36:21

O or A levels, so I thought to take a history of the world.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch36:27

By J. M. Roberts.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch36:29

So I might catch up with a little bit of my general knowledge.

Presenter36:34

And what about your luxury?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch36:35

I was going to take um bag of Ines number three because I love gardening and some seeds, but then somebody said, Well, I suppose something will grow on that island anyway, so I don't bother and I think I'll have to take the cello.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch36:51

So it'll be the cello, will be the luxury.

Presenter36:54

And Nita Lasker Velfish, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 337:05

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.