Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 1996
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. One of the most distinguished members of the English Chamber Orchestra, she has toured all over the world with them.
However, as she will be telling Sue Lawley, up until the early 1980s, she always refused to visit one country - Germany. For it was from there that her Jewish parents were taken away by the Gestapo, never to be seen again. From the age of 18, she herself was taken away to Auschwitz. There, because she was able to play the cello, she survived, and played in the camp's orchestra. However, when she was later moved to Belsen, she nearly didn't. She'll be talking about playing in the orchestra at Auschwitz, about the importance of music in sustaining life both then and now, and about her feelings towards Germany and the Germans more than 50 years after the events of her early life.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Piano Sonata Opus 111 by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: The History of the World by J M Roberts Luxury: Cello
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. |
| 0:05.0 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.2 | The program was originally broadcast in 1996 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a cellist. Her musical talent has made her one of the most distinguished |
| 0:34.6 | members of the English Chamber Orchestra with whom she's toured all over the world. |
| 0:39.0 | Until the early 80s, however, there was one country which she always refused to visit. |
| 0:43.0 | That country was Germany where at the age of 18 she found herself a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz |
| 0:49.0 | because she could play the cello she survived. |
| 0:52.0 | She was moved to Belson where she almost didn't. |
| 0:54.4 | Hers is a remarkable story which remained untold until she decided to reveal it |
| 1:00.1 | herself nearly 50 years after the war had ended. |
| 1:04.0 | Through music she's written, we were able to raise ourselves high |
| 1:07.4 | above the inferno of Auschwitz, |
| 1:09.7 | into spheres where we could not be touched |
| 1:12.0 | by the degradation of concentration camp existence. |
| 1:15.4 | She is Anita Lasker Valfish. |
| 1:18.2 | It's a simple truth, isn't it Anita, that if you hadn't played the cello you wouldn't be here today? |
| 1:24.0 | Yes. |
| 1:25.0 | I mean it's a simple fact that we were needed at the time. |
| 1:29.0 | They wanted an orchestra so they needed the people who played in that |
| 1:33.2 | Orchestra so it would have been a little bit |
| 1:35.2 | foolish to stick us straight in the gas chamber. |
| 1:38.4 | But when you arrived in that camp and you told somebody I think on your first day. Oh yes |
... |
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