Esther Bejarano: Auschwitz orchestra member dies Esther Bejarano

one among the last survivors of an orchestra formed within the Auschwitz stockade, has died aged 96. She died at a Jewish hospital within the German city of Hamburg on Saturday. The orchestra, formed of 40 women inmates, had to perform at the concentration camp whenever prisoners were marched off to figure or when new trains arrived with Jews on board. Later in life, she dedicated her time to creating sure the planet didn’t dump the Holocaust. Bejarano’s sister and oldsters were killed by the Nazis. She was sent to Auschwitz when she was 18 and was forced into hard labor, carrying heavy stones. But someday she discovered that SS guards were trying to find an accordion player to hitch the camp’s orchestra. Despite not knowing a way to play the instrument, she volunteered. She recalled the Auschwitz Women’s Orchestra having to play to new arrivals. “You knew they were visiting be gassed, and everyone you’ll do was stand there and play,” she told Deutsche Welle in 2014. She was eventually transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for ladies, where she managed to flee. “Esther Bejarano survived Auschwitz because she played accordion within the camp’s orchestra. She dedicated her life to music and to the fight against racism and anti-Semitism,” Meron Mendel, head of the Anne Frank Education Centre said on Twitter. ‘Why I took Austrian citizenship aged 92’ Searching for traces of my grandfather at Auschwitz After the top of the globe War Two, she lived in Israel and have become a singer before returning to Germany in 1960. She dedicated the remainder of her life to educating people about the Holocaust and fighting xenophobia. German secretary of state Heiko Maas said Bejarano was a crucial voice in the fight against racism and anti-Semitism. Bejarano co-founded the International Auschwitz Committee and delivered speeches to varsities about her life. She also performed alongside her children, playing Yiddish melodies and Jewish resistance songs during a group they named Confidence. “It is my revenge that I’m going to the colleges, that I tell people what happened earlier. in order that nothing like which will ever happen again,” she once said.