Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

Who is Anita Lasker-Wallfisch?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, born Anita Lasker 17 July 1925 in Breslau, Germany is a cellist, and a surviving member of the Women's Orchestra in Auschwitz.

Lasker was born into a professional Jewish family, one of three sisters. Her father was a lawyer; her mother a violinist. They suffered discrimination from 1933, but as their father had fought at the front in World War I, gaining an Iron Cross, the family felt some degree of immunity from Nazi persecution.

Marianne, the eldest sister, fled to England in 1941. In April 1942, Lasker's parents were taken away and are believed to have died near Lublin in Poland. Lasker and her sister Renate were not deported because they were working in a paper factory. There, they met French prisoners of war and started forging papers to enable French forced labourers to cross back into France.

"I could never accept that I should be killed for what I happened to be born as, and decided to give the Germans a better reason for killing me."

In September 1942 they themselves tried to escape to France, but were arrested for forgery at Breslau station by the Gestapo. Only their suitcase, which they had already put on the train, escaped.