Nothing can prepare
a parent for the death of his or her
own child, and it is the more poignant
and unbearable should it occur when
the offspring has attained adulthood.
Arnold Rosé (1863-1946) was a
father who had to endure such an unnatural
event very late in his long life. He
was for years the Concertmaster or Leader
of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra,
fulfilling the dual role of leading
its concerts and performances at the
Vienna Court Opera. Barely 18 years
of age when he was appointed back in
Hans Richter’s day by Wilhelm Jahn,
he held the post for an incredible 57
years, from 1881 until he was ousted
by the Nazis in 1938. Even more impressive
was the fact that he led the Rosé
Quartet for 62 years from 1882 to 1944,
by which time it was playing in exile
in war-time Britain. As if such a musical
pedigree was not enough, he was also
Mahler’s brother-in-law, having married
the composer’s sister Justine the day
after Mahler married his wife Anna in
March 1902. The Rosé’s daughter
Alma, the subject of this biography,
was named after Mahler’s wife. Bruno
Walter, Mahler’s amanuensis and torchbearer
for decades, became a family friend,
‘Uncle Bruno’ to Alma Rosé.
Alma and her brother
Alfred (destined for a conducting career
until political events changed the course
of his life too) grew up among an enviable
circle of musicians. Her wartime (1916)
autograph books reveal a litany of mouth-watering
names such as singers Leo Slezak, Lotte
Lehmann, Selma Kurz and Maria Jeritza,
conductors Furtwängler and Mengelberg,
the pianist Backhaus, and composers
Schoenberg, Korngold, Pfitzner, and
Richard Strauss. Alma made her debut
in 1926 playing Bach’s double violin
concerto alongside her father, her talent
as yet unripe but discernible. The following
year she met her future husband, Czech
violinist Váša Príhoda,
although Rudolf Bing or Walter Slezak
might well have won her, either of whom
would have changed the course of her
life, if not saved it. This is indeed
a story of what ifs? or if
onlys? Alma built herself a nice
career as a performer and in the 1930s
founded and led a women’s touring orchestra
which did her reputation a lot of good.
When the Rosé family (Justine
having died) found itself caught unawares
by the progress of Nazism, she showed
huge courage in getting her family out
of Austria, her father Arnold to Britain
and brother Alfred to America. From
Britain she chose to return to Europe,
in fact to Holland on 26 November 1939,
nearly three months after war was declared,
an act which would ultimately cost her
her life. Her decision was taken because
she had an opportunity to work, albeit
leading an ensemble at the Grand Hotel
Central in Amsterdam. Back in London
she could have been part of her father’s
famous quartet, now giving concerts
as part of Myra Hess’s hugely popular
National Gallery lunchtime concerts,
but she was too proud and independent
to admit that her decision to return
had been wrong. At first even her father
understood and wrote that he was ‘very
proud of you and admire you. You have
been possessed by Mahler’s spirit, for
in my family there never were such dynamic
people’. But when the Germans suddenly
invaded as far as Dunkirk, the situation
changed dramatically and Alma was trapped.
Her brother never heard from her again
after Pearl Harbour (7 December 1941)
and a year later (14 December 1942)
she sent a last communication via the
Red Cross to her father in England,
saying in a veiled message of reassurance,
‘Justine’s daughter is married’ (which
he took to mean that she was being ‘looked
after’). Her Guadagnini violin was entrusted
to a friend for safekeeping. Too late,
she decided to flee for she was so concerned
for the safety of Dutch friends who
sheltered her, that she could not live
with the possibility that her actions
might endanger them or their families.
She tried to get to Switzerland but
it was hopeless, and in Dijon after
only five days on the run she was betrayed
and arrested by the Gestapo on a train.
After a few months
in the concentration camp at Drancy,
she was transported to Auschwitz on
18 July 1943 in Convoy 57 consisting
of a thousand captives, 522 men and
boys, 430 women and girls, 48 of unspecified
sex. Of this number only 59 would survive
until war ended in 1945, and Alma Rosé
was not destined to be among them. The
rest of this enthralling book is devoted
to the rigours, routines and horrors
of life in Auschwitz. Despite the clarity
and detail the book contains, existence
in this living nightmare was so grim
and tenuous, that it becomes unimaginable
to the reader. As one SS doctor put
it, ‘you have to realise that murdering
people became as natural as carrying
out the routine jobs you have to do
every day’, whilst an inmate recalled
that ‘we were there to die and not to
live’. To survive Alma fell on the only
two strengths in her armoury, her personality
and her music. The latter was put to
use because the women’s camp had a fledgling
orchestra, modelled on a similar one
in the men’s, but at the time of her
arrival its survival, and that of its
members, depended on someone to give
it direction and bring about a serious
improvement in its musical standards.
What it did not lack was instruments,
of which there were many among the possessions
brought by the hundreds of thousands
of victims each week, and dumped unceremoniously
by the trackside as they descended from
trains of cattle wagons before being
sorted into two groups, those immediately
condemned and those for whom death was
merely postponed. Average life expectancy
at Auschwitz was a matter of months,
not years. As soon as she arrived, Alma
began to organise cabarets among the
members of Experimental Block 10 where
she was housed, and the SS soon deemed
her talents too precious and transferred
her to head the orchestra, the brainchild
from its inception during the spring
of 1943 of the notorious SS officer
Maria Mandel. The instruments of the
Auschwitz orchestra consisted of violins,
mandolins, guitars, two cellos, double
bass, flute, recorder and piccolo, accordions,
percussion, piano for rehearsal purposes
only, and varying numbers of singers
and music copyists. During its existence
between April 1943 and October 1944
the orchestra had three conductors,
Alma being its second for eight months
from August 1943 until April 1944.
Its first conductor,
violinist Zofia Czajkowska, knew the
orchestra had a better chance of survival
under the direction of a professional
musician of the calibre of Alma, and
she stood aside to allow her to be appointed
as kapo, or block chief, and set about
her task. She literally had life and
death control over its members as the
Music Block became a doorway to life
in the words of its accordionist Flora
Schrijver Jacobs (150 women applied
for the position from whom she was picked
at a final audition). During Alma’s
tenure the ensemble improved its sound
and broadened its repertoire to include
classics such as Strauss waltzes, despite
the fact that few of its members were
trained musicians. Alma was a hard taskmaster,
continually striving for improvement
and constantly admonishing the slightest
lapse when the playing fell short of
her high expectations. When all else
failed, her watchword was ‘if we don’t
play well, we’ll go to the gas’, to
which there was no answer. Yet she also
took risks, such as a disguised version
of the banned music of the Jewish Mendelssohn
(for example his violin concerto), as
well as producing from memory rescored
versions of familiar music (such as
Beethoven’s Pathétique piano
sonata arranged for three violins and
cello by one of the members, Fania Fénelon).
The orchestra’s duties were several.
Twice a week and weather permitting
they would take their stools and music
stands to play outside the hospital
block, on a daily basis they had to
play for the morning departure and evening
arrival of the work detail as they passed
through the camp gates, and finally
they had to play to the whims and demands
of their torturers. Between such duties
the orchestra practised constantly,
as much as ten hours each day.
Alma’s death took place
on 5 April 1944; she had been ill for
three days. Ironically the Nazi doctors,
including the notorious Josef Mengele,
did everything possible to save her
but to no avail. What killed her remains
a mystery, though botulism remains the
most likely cause. She had attended
a birthday party for a privileged prisoner
and it may have been as a result of
something she ate or drank, although
perceived wisdom is that, as a camp
veteran, she would have been too wary
of poor quality alcohol. Privileged
even on her deathbed, she died in a
private room, separated from other sick
and dying prisoners. Even Maria Mandel
mourned her passing and, in an unprecedented
move, announced that the members of
the orchestra could visit the hospital
block to bid farewell to their dead
conductor. Her successor was the Ukrainian
pianist and music copyist Sonya Winogradowa,
but she was unable to sustain either
Alma’s musical discipline or quality
of playing, neither did the SS grant
her the authority they had afforded
to Alma. By October 1944 the Jewish
girls in the orchestra were evacuated
to Belsen and the non-Jews to the main
camp at Auschwitz, and the orchestra
effectively ceased to exist.
Although four and half
million perished at Auschwitz, most
of the women in the Music Block survived,
but not Alma Rosé. Her father
lived long enough to hear news of her
death, and his own followed shortly
thereafter, and today a few survivors
keep her memory alive and have written
their own memoirs.
Richard Newman’s well-researched
book is a compelling read despite the
inevitable anaesthetising effect produced
by the numbers of new arrivals of transported
prisoners and their inevitable despatch
to the gas chambers. It does not take
long before death becomes as expected
as life does in ‘normal’ times today.
There are the frustrations of no recordings
of Alma’s pre-war playing career, and
the greater ones when reading of her
decision to leave the safety of Britain
for Europe (she was clearly taken in
by the effects of the so-called phoney
war) or not to flee back when, even
at the last moment, she might have saved
herself. Her pre-war 1757 Guadagnini
violin did survive. In a twist of irony,
during the 1980s its sound could be
heard among the string section of the
Metropolitan Opera House in New York,
whose General Manager Rudolf Bing had
been Alma’s suitor for a while before
the war. Her native Vienna has marked
her life with a street named after her
but this book is a more fitting testimonial.
Christopher Fifield
See also review
by Tony Duggan
Amadeus Press ISBN 1-57467-051-4