On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was finally liberated. In The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, New York Times bestselling author Anne Sebba drew on meticulous archival research and exclusive first-hand accounts to tell the full and astonishing story of how a disparate band of young girls struggled to overcome differences and little musical knowledge to form an orchestra in order to survive the horrors of Auschwitz.
Below, Anne Sebba shared with The History Reader her list of the most important Holocaust books which helped her research The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz.
The Nine by Gwen Strauss
A gripping true story about women, Strauss tells how nine resistance women escaped from a nazi camp and survived thanks to courage, resilience, and sisterhood.
A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead
The story of a group of French women resisters who were sent to the brutal all female camp of Ravensbruck where only 49 survived.
999 by Heather Dune Macadam
An important account of the first women sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau from Slovakia.
The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland
A gripping account of the horrors of Auschwitz as well as a deep exploration of why governments were so slow to respond.
Nine Suitcases by Béla Zsolt
One of the first holocaust memoirs ever written but translated into English only in 2004. It is a harrowing memoir by the Hungarian writer of his survival in the Ghetto and then as a forced labourer in Ukraine finally how he escaped Auschwitz by means of a deal that saved a thousand or so Hungarians at the end of the war.
If This Is a Man by Primo Levi
Primo Levi, a Jewish-Italian chemist and survivor of Auschwitz, wrote a number of books about his wartime trauma but this is his most famous. His deep philosophical understanding of the difficulty faced by survivors is a must for any one who wants to understand the Holocaust and its aftermath.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
I keep this important book by my desk as no one else who experienced the Nazi death camps has been able to explain so well how it was still possible to find meaning in life in the post-war world.
ANNE SEBBA is a prize-winning biographer, lecturer, and former Reuters foreign correspondent who has written several books, including That Woman and Les Parisiennes. A former chair of Britain’s Society of Authors and now on the Council, Anne is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. She lives in London.