The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz

Anne Sebba brings meticulous research and a brilliant writer's eye to one of the darkest questions of World War II. What would you do to survive and what might be the price?

An important addition to our understanding of Auschwitz, of women's experiences during the Shoah, of the power of music to resist the overwhelming forces of dehumanisation and most especially of apparent paradox that the killers could cherish beautiful music at one moment and then resume their monstrous killing the next. The research is prodigious, the stories gripping. The book deepens all that we know and shows that examining one subset of the victims of Auschwitz, only enhances our understanding of life within the camp

An important record of the incomprehensible cruelty perpetrated in Auschwitz, using music as an instrument of torture. But for those who played, it was a path to survival

Anne Sebba tells this harrowing story with tremendous rigour and care, capturing both the complex horror of the women's situation and the dignity and bravery with which they faced it. An impressive, important, deeply moving book