Introduction
Following the end of the Second World War, in December 1945, the Central Historical Commission (CHC) was established in Munich by the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the U.S. Zone.[1] Its purpose was to document the atrocities of the Holocaust using any available sources, ranging from photographs to testimonies, and from reports to folk songs. The word to describe this process in Yiddish is hurbnforshung—in English, “destruction research.” Researchers traveled through the postwar refugee camps, gathering first-person resources and innovating ways to distribute them. The goal was not merely documentation: it was to ensure that the weight of memory shaped the future. The CHC understood that remembrance is an ongoing, active process that informs justice, identity, and resistance against erasure. Their work laid the foundation for contemporary Holocaust research.A future of remembrance is about more than recalling the past; it is about ensuring that cultural memory remains a force against future oppression.
This paper examines the Holocaust’s dual impact on Jewish music: as a tool for survival and as a symbol of cultural resilience. By exploring the lives of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Diana Blumenfeld, this essay demonstrates how music functioned both as a coping mechanism and as resistance against the Nazi regime’s attempts at cultural genocide. Structurally, it is divided into four main sections. The first argues the importance of recognizing ‘cultural genocide’ as a critical aspect of the Holocaust, in addition to the more obvious element of physical genocide. The second explores the lives of these two musicians during the interwar period, revealing early signs of an impending cultural genocide. The third discusses the lives of the two women during the Holocaust and demonstrates how, despite their particular circumstances, they were able to survive by using music as a coping mechanism. The fourth and final section recounts the legacies of these women and illustrates how Jewish music has survived and grown since the Holocaust.
Section One: Cultural Genocide
The concept of cultural genocide emerged directly following the Holocaust, first used by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944 in the same book which established ‘genocide’ as a widely used legal term.[2] However, cultural genocide is yet to be defined clearly in international law. The term eludes concrete definition since, as Elisa Novic writes, “on the one hand, it relies on a broad definition of culture and, on the other, it sticks to the concept of genocide, which is defined very narrowly in international law.”[3]
The absence of an official legal definition has created a gray area, wherein legal experts have sought to uncover distinct elements or features of the processes which contribute to cultural genocide. Historically, cultural genocide has been viewed as a supplemental process to genocide, but is increasingly viewed as its own entity. In The Concept of Cultural Genocide: An International Law Perspective, Elisa Novic outlines some commonly used definitions of cultural genocide offered in lieu of one with international legal merit. The first definition Novic explores is Lemkin’s, who coined ‘genocide’ as a legal term, and did so largely on the basis of the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust.[4] Lemkin defined ‘cultural genocide’ as a subsidiary to the process of genocide. This definition views the destruction of physical representations of a people to be the prominent feature of cultural genocide.
A more contemporary definition offered by Novic was conceived by Yvonne Donders, and views cultural genocide, rather, as a distinct process. Cultural genocide is here defined as:
the destruction by the State or State organs of the culture of a community in its broad sense of the term, including the ‘distinctive spiritual material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group,’ encompassing, ‘in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.’[5]
The Jewish experience during the Holocaust fits this definition on many levels. The destruction of “distinctive spiritual material,” including the destruction of countless synagogues and places of worship, most definitely took place before and during the Holocaust, the most prominent example being Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, a series of pogroms in November 1938 during which the Nazis destroyed many Jewish synagogues, businesses, and homes.[6] The destruction of “intellectual […] features of society” also applies to the Jewish condition as, in September 1935, the Nuremberg Law ensured that no Jews could attend state schools or continue their professional careers. Jewish “ways of living together” were also altered, undeniably, by the Holocaust, most critically through the forced removal of the Jewish population from their homes and into ghettos and concentration camps.[7]
In Cultural Genocide, Lawrence Davidson defines cultural genocide as the “purposeful destructive targeting of out-group cultures so as to destroy or weaken them in the process of conquest or domination.”[8] In elaborating on this picture of cultural genocide, Davidson offers a genealogical account of its origins. First, Davidson notes that every person, and by extension every culture, belongs to their own tiny corner of the earth. For all affairs which occur beyond these local corners, individuals rely on second-hand information. This exposes an associated danger: distance allows for false news to spread for lack of a better, proximal source. Instinctive emotional sensitivities among individuals can worsen this effect. When false news spreads, and individuals feel that they or their livelihoods are threatened, they are more susceptible to manipulation. To solidify this narrative, Davidson quotes Descartes: “many things… extravagant and ridiculous to our apprehension are yet by common consent received and approved.”[9] Ideas and beliefs that might seem absurd or irrational to individuals can nevertheless obtain wide acceptance in society; in this sense, emotional appeal, rather than logic, prevails.
This narrative has clear parallels with the treatment of the Jewish culture under Nazi occupation. Nazi propaganda during this period suppressed alternative, local news sources and directly exploited emotional sensitivities among local populations.[10] Within Germany, embarrassment over the loss of the First World War, as well as the sheer extent of war reparations demanded at Versailles, left Germans defensive of their home and national pride, and therefore ripe for emotional manipulation. Overseas fears also played a role, rallying the Allies towards an early policy of appeasement toward Nazi expansion. This process laid the groundwork for both cultural and physical genocide.
Overall, the Holocaust can be considered a case of both broader genocide and cultural genocide specifically. Some may argue that the use of the term ‘cultural genocide’ does not apply to the Holocaust: in this view, the tragic deaths of the Jewish people caused the loss of Jewish culture, rather than the independent or supplemental process of cultural genocide. Instead of making this argument, I propose instead that it is necessary to discuss cultural genocide when analyzing the atrocities of the Holocaust because it was not just people that were targeted: it was their lifestyles, their beliefs, their music, and their intellectual and cultural histories. The Holocaust was more than just a physical attack on a people, and there is more to the story than just the physical deaths of six million Jews within Europe. Viewing the Holocaust as a genocide with both physical and cultural components allows us to acknowledge, in full, the direct attempt by the Nazis to eradicate Jewish culture.
Understanding cultural genocide as the systematic destruction of a community’s cultural identity provides a critical lens for analyzing the experiences of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Diana Blumenfeld. Both women’s lives demonstrate how the Nazis targeted Jewish culture not only through physical violence but also by suppressing Jewish music, art, and intellectual life. Despite these efforts, their use of music as a means of both survival and resistance illustrates the resilience of Jewish culture even in the face of systematic destruction.
Section Two: Prewar Jewish Life
Before the Second World War, the Jewish people had resided in Germany for centuries and had, to some extent, assimilated into German society. Many Jews spoke German, felt German, and worked alongside their non-Jewish counterparts. By 1933, less than 1 percent of the entirety of the German population were Jews, but 70% of these lived in urban areas.[11]
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was born in 1925 in Breslau (then part of Germany, now in Poland), the youngest of three sisters. Describing her childhood, she writes, “[t]here was no particular emphasis on being Jewish. We were a typical completely assimilated Jewish Liberal family.”5 Besides synagogue attendance on the high holidays and yearly celebrations of Passover, the family carried out their lives as any other non-Jewish resident of their town would. Her family focused on culture, which included learning to speak French and play musical instruments.[12]
Anita’s love for music came from her mother, whom she portrayed in her autobiography Inherit the Truth as a “fine violinist.”[13] She played cello, while her sisters Marianna and Renate learned piano and violin respectively. She writes, “We were a trio and as a special treat I was occasionally allowed to take part in the weekly quartet sessions at home.”[14] In these sessions, the music was predominantly classical.
While her home life was calm and happy, Anita could sense that something was amiss, although she could not put her finger on what was wrong or why.[15] Her first experience of antisemitism came at school, when the non-Jewish students would not allow Anita to wipe the board because they did not want to “let the Jew have the sponge” while spitting at her and calling her a “dirty Jew.”[16] As she watched her friends emigrate due to worsening segregation in Germany, Anita wondered what the path of her family would look like in the future. Her father remained optimistic that the situation in Germany would improve, meaning that by the time the family made the decision to emigrate, the borders to most nations had been closed to German Jews.
Her musical journey also began to increasingly suffer from the widening German restrictions against Jews. Because of the new laws, no German cello teachers were willing to risk having a Jewish student. Prior to the official outbreak of the war, Anita found a loophole that would soon be closed: she went to study in Berlin with a cellist named Leo Rostal. She expressed in her memoir that “[i]n retrospect, I much admire my parents’ decision to send a mere child off on her own to a big city like Berlin. It was in reality the only way I could have had cello lessons.”[17] What was supposed to be an eight-year tutelage, however, was soon cut short. The devastating pogroms of Kristallnacht in 1938 saw the destruction of Jewish synagogues, homes, and shops, and the mass deportation of Jewish men to concentration camps. After Kristallnacht, she wrote that “every day that came to an end with one’s family still intact was a kind of achievement.”[18]
As the world quickened towards war, Anita’s life began to shift. In a letter to her sister on June 3, 1939, she describes the urgency with which Jews were fleeing Germany. The letter also includes a poignant moment in her musical journey: in a little music shop, a man had given her a piece of music called “Kol Nidrei” by Bruch, a piece based on a text recited at the start of Yom Kippur.[19] The bookstore owner had said that if she had refused it, he would have been compelled to throw it away.[20]
The destruction of musical pieces like “Kol Nidrei” by Bruch was part of the larger trend of literary and cultural destruction under the Nazi regime. The most prominent example was the book burnings which took place in 34 cities and centers of learning throughout Germany, starting on May 10, 1933. The literature targeted was any penned by Jewish, liberal, or leftist authors–what were considered to be “un-German” books. Long after this initial incident, the Nazis continued to raid book stores, warehouses, and libraries for such literature.
The high levels of censorship within Germany, and later the other Nazi-occupied nations, represent an important trend in cultural genocide: the destruction of “intellectual… features of society,” as cited in Donders’ definition of cultural genocide.[21] These ‘features’ include everything from books to music to synagogues, all of which the Nazis targeted. The targeting of “Kol Nidrei” is especially symptomatic of the extent to which the Nazis would go to limit Jewish culture. This piece was not even written by a Jewish composer; it only referenced a Jewish text. From the very beginning, the Nazis’ relentless campaign to not only end Jewish lives but erase Jewish culture illustrates the far-reaching scope of their cultural genocide, where even a composition merely inspired by Jewish tradition was deemed unacceptable.
Diana Blumenfeld
While Anita’s Lasker-Wallfisch’s musical career was still in the cradle, Diana Blumenfeld’s was on the rise. As a prominent figure within the Jewish community of Warsaw, Diana already held a unique role in Jewish society. With a distinctively low alto voice, she inspired many of Warsaw’s famous songwriters to create new pieces to suit her unique tone.
In 1923, she married Yonas Turkov, another prominent Yiddish performer. The two were a part of the social and cultural elite of Warsaw, and he was a much-loved public figure for his acting. He was, as one source notes, “on his way to becoming one of the most successful actors of the inter-war Yiddish theatre world.”[22] Their marriage marked a merging of two powerful artistic forces within the Yiddish theater world, positioning them at the center of Warsaw’s cultural life. The couple’s home became a gathering place for Jewish artists, intellectuals, and actors, contributing to the artistic renaissance of Warsaw’s Jewish community. Yonas’ acting and Diana’s musical prowess complemented each other, creating a powerful artistic synergy that became emblematic of the thriving Yiddish theater scene in Poland.
Beyond her role as a vocalist, Diana was celebrated as a dramatic actress within Warsaw’s main Yiddish theaters, performing in plays that ranged from traditional Jewish dramas to avant-garde productions. She was a frequent performer at the Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater (Varshever Yidisher Kunst-teater, or VYKT), a venue dedicated to both preserving and innovating Yiddish drama. Her performances in plays such as “Yoshe Kalb” by I. J. Singer highlighted her versatility and ability to embody both musical and dramatic roles. The photograph that shows Diana (center) alongside her husband Yonas (left) and fellow actress Ester Goldinberg (right) captures not only a moment in the play but also the spirit of Warsaw’s thriving Jewish cultural scene in the interwar period, shortly before the start of the Second World War.[23] Her skill in bringing characters to life, combined with her rich voice, created unforgettable performances that attracted audiences from across Poland and beyond. Blumenfeld’s artistry was emblematic of a broader cultural awakening among Warsaw’s Jewish community, positioning her as a symbol of both artistic innovation and cultural continuity. These performances were more than mere entertainment: they were powerful expressions of Jewish identity and resilience, at a time when cultural expression held a vital place in the Jewish community.
The couple were continuing their rise in the social stratosphere when the Nazis invaded Poland. Before the war, Diana and Yonas were on their way to the highest reaches of society; in a short period of time, their careers were turned upside down. The couple was forcibly relocated to the Warsaw Ghetto.
The persecution of Diana and her husband is a clear demonstration of the relationship between cultural and physical genocide –the suppression of Jewish excellence in theater and music, through indirect as well as direct means. Examples of the persecution of Jewish excellence can be seen throughout the Holocaust, but most starkly in the biographical accounts of significant Jewish intellectuals and spiritual leaders at the onset of the catastrophe.[24] This cultural persecution also manifested itself in education: any teachers who did not teach Nazi propaganda in schools were replaced with academics who were willing to obey the rules of the regime.[25]
Section Three: The Holocaust
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Diana Blumenfeld had differing experiences during the Holocaust, but both found ways to use their musical talents to survive, both physically and spiritually. While Diana found solace and strength in the Warsaw Ghetto, where her performances inspired fellow prisoners and preserved a sense of identity amidst destruction, Anita’s musical talents secured her a position in the Auschwitz orchestra and had enabled her survival.
The Warsaw Ghetto, where Diana and her husband found themselves, had a population of about 460,000 people, with an average of eight to ten people per room.[26] This population was also quite diverse: there were both religious and non-religious Jews, as well as Jews who did not realize or recognize their Jewish ancestry but were nonetheless persecuted by the Nazis.
In 1941, the Warsaw Ghetto fostered a creative culture that manifested itself in the creation of various cultural institutions as well as the continuation of the careers of various Jewish musicians. One such musician was Blumenfeld, who continued her career as a vocalist, though not without change. Having entered the ghetto, she began to sing songs that were relevant to the Jewish experience under Nazi occupation, the most famous of which were the Yiddish songs “Kulis” (Coolies), “Di Broyt Farkoyfern” (The Bread Seller), and “A Yid” (A Jew).
“Kulis” offers a powerful case in point. The title is a derogatory term referring to an enslaved person. Both Jews in concentration camps and those performing forced labor in the ghettos were, in a meaningful sense, enslaved. Diana most likely sang this song in the ghetto as a statement of Jewish sentiment. (You can hear a recording of Diana singing the song “Kulis” here.) She not only performed at the various cafés that had formed in the ghetto, the most famous being the “Sztuka” café, but she was also a recurring performer in the various Yiddish theaters that arose within the bounds of the ghetto. Venues like Femina, Eldorado, and the Nowy Teatr Kameralny, though modest and constrained, served as makeshift stages where she used her voice to inspire and console those around her. Her performances during this period were not only acts of survival but also defiant reminders of a rich cultural heritage under threat. Even in the darkest moments, Blumenfeld’s art became a beacon of hope, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Diana continued to inspire various composers, including Jewish composers, many of whom were trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto. One example is the female composer Pola (Paulina) Braun. Braun was a famous songwriter in Warsaw prior to the onset of the war and wrote in both Polish and Yiddish, frequently for the theater. Forced to reside in the ghetto, she, like Blumenfeld, altered the topics of her songs to focus on Jewish experience. Indeed, Diana and Pola worked together often until the latter’s tragic death in the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp in November 1943. Diana and her husband were able to escape the liquidation and survive the war.
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch had a markedly different experience. She continued to live in Germany during the early stages of the Second World War. Before she was conscripted to work by the Nazi government, she was still able to attend a school specifically for Jews. This decision forced her to limit her cello studies, due to both the demands of school and the absence of cello teachers who were willing to teach a Jew. In a letter to her eldest sister from 1941, who had emigrated to England just prior to the outbreak of the war, Anita wrote, “I suppose you think that I am pursuing my cello—far from it!”[27] Eventually, she found a way to resume lessons with a teacher who had the coded name of “Eierbauch” in her letters and the actual surname of Auerbach. Throughout her letters, Lasker-Wallfisch discusses the concerts that she performed in during this time. Soon after, her parents were deported to Ibisca, near Lublin.[28] She was sixteen years old when she saw them for the last time.|
While conscripted to work in a factory, Anita and her sister Renate were caught aiding the escape of French prisoners of war by printing false passes. When trying to escape with their own false passes, the two sisters were caught by the authorities, arrested, and convicted for their role in the French escapes. Anita’s sentence was eighteen months. She spent a year in a prison before being forced to sign a ‘voluntary’ transfer paper that would result in her relocation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
As Anita arrived in Auschwitz, she was ‘processed’ by a Jewish woman forced to manage new arrivals. Here, music once again changed the course of her life:
I will never know what prompted me to tell her that I played the cello. It might have seemed a superfluous piece of information under the circumstances, but I did tell her, and her reaction was quite unexpected. ‘That is fantastic,’ she said, and grabbed me. ‘Stand aside. You will be saved, you must just wait here.’[29]
The next moment she describes is the one in which she met Alma Rosé, who was the leader of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz at the time of Anita’s arrival. She was initially confused as to who Alma was – she was dressed so well that it was impossible to tell if she was a guard or a prisoner herself. Upon meeting Anita, Alma repeated the same remark – “you will be saved” – and promised her that she would be given an “audition.”[30]
Alma Rosé was the niece of famous composer Gustav Mahler. Mahler, alongside Alma’s family, converted to Christianity as a way to further their musical careers.[31] However, Alma was still persecuted as Jewish during the Second World War. She was initially placed in the medical experimentation block in Auschwitz, but once Nazi officials realized that she was a famous violinist, she was transferred to Birkenau, where she was made conductor of the women’s orchestra.
Alma quickly began to use the orchestra as a way to save as many people as possible. She would hold ‘auditions’ for participation, and whenever someone had any kind of talent at all, she would give them a role, whether as a player, a music copyist or even an assistant. Alma was a famously strict conductor and leader, but this was for two good reasons. One was that it was necessary to please the SS guards to survive, and so the orchestra needed to be unquestionably good. The second, however, was that this tough attitude provided something for the members of the orchestra to focus on other than their circumstances in the concentration camp. As Anita records in her memoir,
with this iron discipline she managed to focus our attention away from what was happening outside the block, away from the smoking chimneys and the profound misery of life in the camp, to an F which should have been an F#.[32]
Alma Rosé did not survive Auschwitz after becoming ill (the source of this illness is debated), but her legacy lives on in the members of her orchestra.
Anita’s position in Alma’s orchestra was particularly beneficial because she was the only cellist within the camp. Being in the orchestra gave her some leverage in its own right, but being the only one able to play the bass of the music resulted in even more. Anita recounts two clear examples of this in her memoir.
The first moment is when she contracted typhus. In concentration camps, illness was rampant due to the horrific conditions. When Anita fell ill, she was sent to the sick block, called the Revier. There, sick prisoners underwent random ‘selections’: the SS officers would decide who was well enough to ‘pass’ and who would be killed. She recalls this moment of decision: “I was mainly unconscious, although I have a vague memory of seeing some SS men at the end of my bunk, and of hearing someone say, ‘this is the cellist’, and moving on.”[33]
The second moment is when she was able to use her leverage to gain a more advantageous position for her sister within the concentration camp. Due to her position, she succeeded in persuading the camp manager to make her sister a camp messenger, giving her greater security. As Anita puts it, “I was pretty sure that she would not have me ‘put away’ (for want of a better word) for my audacity, since I was irreplaceable as the only cellist in the camp.”[34]
Anita’s experience in Auschwitz demonstrates how, during the persecution of the Jews, some were able to find creative mechanisms of survival. Because of her musical talent, she found a route to survival through the orchestra. It is important to note that the reason Anita had leverage within the camp was because the Nazis viewed her as beneficial to themselves: she could provide them more quality entertainment as the only cello player in the orchestra. Nevertheless, this leverage put her in a slightly more favorable position than that of the other prisoners – and in the rare position where her life was regarded with a small sum of value by the Nazis. This illustrates that, although Jewish music and culture was severely persecuted, Jewish musicians could still use their skill and excellence to survive.
Anita’s role in the orchestra highlights a poignant paradox: while their music was used to entertain SS officers, it also provided a sense of community and psychological resilience for the musicians. This duality underscores the complexity of survival mechanisms within the concentration camps. In this sense, Primo Levi’s notion of the ‘grey zone’ becomes essential in understanding the moral ambiguity and compromised agency of individuals forced to take on particular roles to ensure their survival.[35] Levi introduces the ‘grey zone’ to describe a place where the clear boundaries between victim and perpetrator blur. According to Levi, life in camps could not be reduced to the simple binary of oppressor and oppressed; instead, Nazi tactics sought to implicate victims in acts of complicity, thus problematizing their ability to recognize their own subjugation and domination.
Within the ‘grey zone,’ individuals, such as those who performed in camp orchestras, were thrust into roles that required a degree of collaboration with, or service to, their oppressors. Levi argues that such roles cannot be judged with conventional moral standards, as these individuals were navigating an “infernal environment” where survival frequently depended on some level of compromise.[36] These morally ambiguous roles spanned from minor functionaries performing administrative duties to the Sonderkommandos (translated as “Special Squads,” work units made up of prisoners), who, in an extreme case of forced complicity, were tasked with operating the crematoria. For Anita, the orchestra was a lifeline in the most literal sense, yet it was also a source of internal conflict. Her musical performances, while technically preserving her life, carried an unavoidable moral cost. Performing for the SS officers, Anita’s music was co-opted, its beauty twisted into a tool of the oppressors; yet for Anita and her fellow musicians, it became a vital means of survival, community, and brief reprieve from brutality.
As the arrival of the Red Army to Auschwitz drew closer, Anita was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen camp. There was no orchestra at the camp, and so she had no access to music, much less other basic necessities. In her memoir, she describes the difference between Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen: “Auschwitz was a place where people were murdered. In Belsen they perished.”[37] She was ultimately liberated at the camp by the British Army.
Section Four: Legacies
Having narrated the stories of Lasker-Wallfisch and Blumenfeld during the Holocaust, it is necessary to recognize the resilience of their musical influence and of Jewish culture more broadly following the war.
At the end of the Second World War, Diana Blumenfeld and her husband, Yonas, were dedicated to the immediate revival of the Jewish culture of Poland. The couple was instrumental in the formation of the Association of Jewish Writers, Journalists, and Actors, which Yonas chaired.[38] The first event organized by the group was a concert held in liberated Lublin, the first of its kind following the Holocaust. Held in a previously occupied area, Diana, alongside her husband, was responsible for bringing Jewish art back to the land that was taken from them during the war. Steinlauf writes,
In 1944, with the Red Army still fighting German forces throughout Poland, Yonas Turkow and Diana Blumenfeld appeared in liberated Lublin, ‘like Noah’s dove returning with tidings,’ to stage, ‘like an extraordinary religious act,’ a concert of Yiddish songs that marked ‘the beginning of Jewish theatre art after the flood.’[39]
Apart from this concert, Diana toured the Displaced Persons camps throughout Germany and gave concerts to survivors, in what Stonehill Jewish Song Archive describes as performing “among her own.”[40] She is also known to have performed in Warsaw and around Poland, as well as on Polish radio.
However, Diana and her husband quickly realized that the environment in Poland was no longer the home they knew. Yonas wrote about this feeling in the diary he kept at the time: “Today Warsaw no longer belongs to me; my yesterday was cut down, and my tomorrow? Better not to think of it – here… Warsaw, my Warsaw – for me you are dead!”[41] Following their departure from Poland, Diana began touring throughout Europe and the Americas, as well as in Israel, before settling in New York, where she died in 1961.
On her journey, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, following her liberation at Bergen-Belsen, was relocated three miles from the original camp, to what had previously been a German military establishment.[42] Besides wanting to leave the displaced persons camp and find a new home following the war, her wish was to find a cello.[43] Eventually, that wish came true when one of the officers found an abandoned cello nearby. She expressed her relief:
I was over the moon. It was an early birthday present. […] I soon started to scratch away, and news spread round the camp that I was ‘operational’ as a cellist again. That was far from the truth of course, but it didn’t matter.[44]
Her new cello and her ability to create music again not only brought her extreme joy, but it also led to happiness throughout the camp. The cello was no masterpiece – it was in a state of disrepair that made it difficult to play. Yet the mere prospect of playing was a light in the darkness.
After receiving this cello, Anita was asked to accompany Lady Montgomery, a British woman at the camp, to another displaced persons’ camp where there were Italian prisoners of war that happened to also be musicians. With these Italian displaced people, she formed a “concert party” and traveled through various displaced persons’ camps to perform. Later, Eva Steiner, a singer who was also a part of the Auschwitz orchestra, joined the group.
Anita left the displaced persons’ camp eleven months after liberation, in March 1946, and moved to England. She became a professional musician, married a pianist by the name of Peter Wallfisch, and had two children. Three of her family members, her son and two of her grandsons, also became professional musicians.
Conclusion
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s and Diana Blumenfeld’s journeys are but two demonstrations of the remarkable survival of Jewish culture, and in particular the survival of Jewish music. The first section of my paper sought to establish and clarify the distinctiveness of cultural genocide, focusing on the importance of acknowledging the attempted erasure alongside physical genocide. The second section illustrated the vitality and vivacity of prewar Jewish culture, in particular its strength and diversity. The third section outlined the various attempts at erasure which the Nazi regime perpetrated against Jewish musicians, and the responses that kept Jewish musicians alive, through the experiences of my case studies. The fourth and final section discussed the legacies of these case studies to demonstrate how Jewish music survives and thrives in a post-Holocaust world.
Exploring the failed attempt at cultural genocide during the Holocaust calls into question the validity of the use of legal terminology in such tragedies. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch wrote in her book:
Is it possible to apply law in the conventional sense to crimes so far removed from the law as the massacre of millions of people, which were perpetrated in the cause of ‘purifying the human race’?[45]
Her words underscore the need to expand our understanding of justice beyond conventional frameworks, to recognize the resilience of cultural expressions that defied erasure even as the Nazi war machine sought to exterminate the people to whom that culture belonged. The image of genocide in the popular imagination is one of destruction without real prospects—the state relentlessly rolling forward, over any and all opposition. But the experience of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, and all those who supported their resistance against extermination, attests to the very real prospects of resistance in the face of totalitarianism; just as there is, in Arendt’s phrase, the ‘banality of evil,’ there is also what we might wish to call the banality of good.[46] These are the small, quotidian acts of resistance that, in their totality, work to preserve and defend a living cultural legacy by protecting its performers, cherishing its unifying power in challenging times, and articulating that music as an active act of resistance. The profound resilience of music and culture, like embers, can ignite anew—even after near-extinction. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s and Diana Blumenfeld’s music is more than a memory: it is a lifeblood, a defiant resurgence that honors a world nearly erased.
These forms of resistance are both admirable and difficult to understand within the prevailing legal frameworks of genocide. Legal definitions tend to focus on quantifiable harms—above all, the loss of life—but cultural genocide strikes at the heart of identity, memory, language, art, and culture. Culture, after all, is not quantifiable; we cannot easily ask what it means for a culture to die, except if all of those who share it also perish.
Legal definitions of genocide, as I explored in the first section, emphasize a clear victim-perpetrator relationship, whereas cultural genocide is a frequent consequence of persistent and systemic oppression, where identity itself, as I have sought to demonstrate, is gradually targeted and eroded. The kids of resistance I have described here do not mitigate against genocide in the traditional, physical sense, but they do resist cultural genocide. In consequence, to grasp the full impact and resilience of Jewish culture in the face of the Holocaust, we must go beyond legal frameworks and consider cultural genocide as an attack on the very essence of communal existence. Cultural genocide and the struggle against it, as I have shown through Anita Lasker-Wallfisch and Diana Blumenfeld, resist the confines of law, for it is a quiet battle fought in whispers, memories, and songs that echo long after silence has fallen.
Understanding the insidious power of cultural genocide is as crucial today as it was when Raphael Lemkin coined the term nearly a century ago. Recognizing its presence and appreciating its antecedents—such as those outlined in Umberto Eco’s model of ur-fascism–is not just an intellectual exercise but an essential act of vigilance.[47] The ever-evolving nature of authoritarianism casts a long shadow, capable of silencing cultural expressions just as readily as it enables explicit acts of violence. Only through this awareness can we truly resist both the overt and covert forces that seek to erase entire peoples from history.
[1] EHRI (2013). EHRI – Central Historical Commission of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the US Zone. Available at: https://portal.ehri-project.eu/authorities/ehri_cb-1048.
[2] Leora Bilsky and Rachel Klagsbrun, “The Return of Cultural Genocide?” European Journal of International Law, Volume 29, Issue 2, May 2018, 374.
[3] Elisa Novic The Concept of Cultural Genocide: An International Law Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2016, 2.
[4] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2019). Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin. Ushmm.org. Available at: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/coining-a-word-and-championing-a-cause-the-story-of-raphael-lemkin.
[5] Novic, 4.
[6] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2019). Kristallnacht. Holocaust Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Lawrence Davidson. Cultural Genocide. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012, 1.
[9] René Descartes . Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. John Veitch. New York, NY: Cosimo, 2008, 15.
[10] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Press in the Third Reich. Ushmm.org. Available at: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-press-in-the-third-reich.
[11] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (n.d.). Jewish Communities of Prewar Germany. Available at: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-communities-of-prewar-germany.
[12] Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch – Inherit the Truth. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, 2013. Available at: https://www.hmd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/survivor_stories_anita_lasker_wallfisch_1.pdf.
[13] Lasker-Wallfisch. Inherit the truth, 1939-1945: the documented experiences of a survivor of Auschwitz and Belsen. London: Giles De La Mare, 1996, 17.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid., 20.
[17] Ibid., 19.
[18] Ibid., 18-19.
[19] Ibid., 21.
[20] WRTI (2020). The Melody of Yom Kippur in Max Bruch’s KOL NIDRE. Available at: https://www.wrti.org/arts-desk/2020-09-27/the-melody-of-yom-kippur-in-max-bruchs-kol-nidre.
[21] Novic, The Concept of Cultural Genocide, 4.
[22] Music and the Holocaust. Diana Blumenfeld. Available at: https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/ghettos/warsaw/diana-blumenfeld/.
[23] Eilat Gordin Levitan. Warsaw Theater. Available at: http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/warsaw/w_pages/warsaw_theater.html.
[24] Facing History & Ourselves. Controlling the Universities. Available at: https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/controlling-universities.
[25] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Role of Academics and Teachers. Available at: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-role-of-academics-and-teachers.
[26] Imperial War Museums. Daily Life in the Warsaw Ghetto.Available at: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/daily-life-in-the-warsaw-ghetto.
[27] Translated. Lasker-Wallfisch, Inherit the Truth, 34.
[28] Lasker-Wallfisch, Inherit the Truth, 46.
[29] Lasker-Wallfisch, Inherit the Truth, 72.
[30] Lasker-Wallfisch, Inherit the Truth, 72.
[31] Charles S. Maier. “Christianity and Conviction: Gustav Mahler and the Meanings of Jewish Conversion in Central Europe.” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 11, ed. Dan Diner. Göttingen/Bristol, Conn.: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012, 127-148.
[32] Lasker-Wallfisch, Inherit the Truth, 78.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid., 80-1.
[35] Stef Craps. “The Grey Zone.” Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire. Available at: https://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/1266#text
[36] Ibid.
[37] Lasker-Wallfisch, Inherit the truth, 91.
[38] Music and the Holocaust. Diana Blumenfeld. Available at: https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/ghettos/warsaw/diana-blumenfeld/.
[39] Michael C. Steinlauf. “Jewish Theatre in Poland.” In Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 16: Focusing on Jewish Popular Culture and Its Afterlife, eds. Michael C. Steinlauf and Antony Polonsky. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003, 89.
[40] Stonehill Jewish Song Archive. Diana Blumenfeld. Available at: https://stonehilljewishsongs.wordpress.com/diana-blumenfeld/.
[41] Music and the Holocaust. Yonas Turkov. Available at: https://holocaustmusic.ort.org/places/ghettos/warsaw/turkovyonas/.
[42] Lasker-Wallfisch, Inherit the Truth, 100.
[43] Ibid., 110.
[44] Ibid., 111.
[45] Ibid., 127.
[46] Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. London: Penguin Books, 2006 (reprint).
[47] Umberto Eco (1995) “Ur-Fascism.” The New York Review of Books.
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