London: Anita Lasker-Wallfisch has spent an entire century on this earth, and does not fear death. After all, she had often looked it in the eye when she was deported to Auschwitz simply for being a Jew. It was the largest and most notorious of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, where around 1.1 million people were killed on an industrial scale. Lasker-Wallfisch survived because she could play the cello.
According to Deutsche Welle, for decades, Lasker-Wallfisch has raised her voice against antisemitism, right-wing extremism, and racism as a dedicated witness to history. She has told scores of schoolchildren unsparingly how the Nazis systematically marginalized Jews and ultimately murdered them. She feels it is a duty "that those who survived must serve as voices for the millions who were silenced." That's why she has also taken part in the "Dimensions in Testimony" project, in which interactive holograms enable Holocaust survivors to answer questions even after their deaths.
Considering the current global situation, her despondency is understandable. It's not only because 12% of Germans aged 18 to 29 have never heard of the Holocaust, according to a recent Jewish Claims Conference survey. It's also because since Israel's war in Gaza, antisemitism has been spreading worldwide. "Is it important whether you're Jewish? You're simply a human being," she recently told German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Born Anita Lasker on July 17, 1925, in Breslau, she was the youngest of three sisters in a middle-class family. Her father was a lawyer and her mother a violinist. Her parents valued a good education, and music was part of that. The Laskers were not at all religious. "I didn't know I was Jewish until they spat at me and called me a dirty Jew," she said decades later. "We were ordinary, fully assimilated Germans." That was in 1933, the year the Nazis seized power. Her parents had no illusions about what the Nazi regime planned to do with the Jews.
Lasker-Wallfisch and her sister, Renate, had to work as forced laborers at a paper factory. She used this opportunity to forge documents for other forced laborers from France, enabling them to return to their homeland. In 1943, when the two sisters tried to flee with forged passports, they were imprisoned. Five months later, they arrived separately at Auschwitz. Because Lasker-Wallfisch could play an instrument, she was assigned to the girls' orchestra at Auschwitz. "The cello saved my life," she later said.
In 1944, when Soviet troops were advancing on Auschwitz, Lasker-Wallfisch and her sister were moved to the extremely overcrowded concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen, where people died of hunger, thirst, and disease. British soldiers liberated the camp on April 15, 1945, and the next day, Lasker-Wallfisch described the horror in detail on the BBC's German-language program, expressing a mixture of disbelief and hope after liberation.
In September 1945, she testified against people who had run or worked at Bergen-Belsen before a British military court. It would be a long time until Lasker felt able once again to speak of her experience. She emigrated to Britain in 1946, became a founding member of the English Chamber Orchestra, and married pianist Peter Wallfisch. The couple did not speak to their children about the past initially, but after many decades, Lasker-Wallfisch was ready to tell her story. Her book "Inherit the Truth 1939-1945: The Documented Experiences of a Survivor of Auschwitz and Belsen" was published in 1996.
In 2018, on the German Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism, Lasker-Wallfisch gave a speech in the country's parliament, the Bundestag, admonishing people not to forget. She continued, "What are we meant to draw the line under? What happened, happened, and it cannot be expunged by drawing a line."
Now, Lasker-Wallfisch is turning 100. A concert is being held in her honor in London, with dignitaries from all over the world coming to congratulate one of the last living witnesses of the Holocaust. Her daughter Maya, son Raphael, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will also toast her. But what is important to the centenarian isn't the extravagant celebration. What Lasker-Wallfisch desires above all is that the poison of hate and antisemitism be eradicated once and for all, a wish that is, unfortunately, not so easy to fulfill.
