Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Amid the horrors of Auschwitz, a group of female musicians were forced to play for their lives.

Author Anne Seber joins Lauren Good to discuss this women's orchestra,

exploring how music was used as an instrument of control,

how the musicians fought for their own survival,

and what happened to them after liberation.

And I'm sure many people will be surprised to learn that there was an orchestra

in Auschwitz, formed out of female prisoners. It certainly was a little surprising to me.

We associate music with pleasure and the more romantic, but the reality here is very different,

isn't it? Yes.

I mean, that's absolutely the right place to start.

How on earth, in a place of such brutality, death, pain, sadism, all the grimmest words you could find,

could there be something so sublime and beautiful, and in my

view, music is the most sublime of all the arts? Well, it does need unpicking a little bit.

In fact, there were several male orchestras in all the camps. In Auschwitz, alone, at one point, there were about

14 or 15. There was a symphony orchestra at one point. There was a jazz orchestra, but they

were male orchestras. So this is the only entirely female orchestra in any of the prisons or camps or ghettos under Nazi control.

So it is extraordinary.

On the other hand, it wasn't music as you and I would think of when we go to a concert,

with one exception, which I'll come to, the Sunday concerts.

It was an additional use of torture by the Nazis.

They thought two things. First of all, they wanted to show the world this is a military camp.

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