Remembering Esther Löwy Béjarano (December 15, 1924 – July 10, 2021)

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right … and a desire to know.”
— John Adams, 1765

By Michelle L. Warmath

Those of you who have seen the 1980 Arthur Miller movie “Playing for Time” will remember that it is based on the memories of one of the survivors of the women’s orchestra that was organized in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp from 1943 to November 1944.

Today I would like to honor the memory of one of the last survivors of that orchestra, Ms. Esther Béjarano (née Löwy), who passed away peacefully in Hamburg, Germany recently at the age of 96.

Esther Béjarano was born in Sarrlouis, on the western border of Germany, in 1924. Her father was a cantor and led prayers at the synagogue. Esther was encouraged to take up music and learned to play the piano, and the family moved to Saarbrucken on the German-French border a few years after she was born.

In 1939, when she was 15, Esther was sent to the Nazi labor camp in Neuendorf, near the Polish border, after having tried unsuccessfully to flee Germany to Palestine. Her parents and sister Ruth were also deported and were killed. Esther performed forced labor in Neuendorf for two years. In the spring of 1943, the prisoners in this camp were all removed to Auschwitz-Birkenau in southwestern Poland.

At Birkenau Esther was forced to haul large stones until the Women’s Orchestra was formed by the head female SS guard in the camp at the time, Maria Mandl. Esther played the accordion in this orchestra.

Many concentration camps had men’s orchestras. Their role was to play music to accompany the prisoners leaving for work in the mornings and returning in the evenings, and to entertain the SS officers and other important personalities on Sundays and “special occasions”, but also to play whenever, and in whatever weather, the camp officers believed would be helpful to keep order in the camp, including during the “selection” of arriving deportees for camp tasks or extermination. The musicians remained subject to selection themselves even though being a member of the orchestra offered them a certain status that meant that they were usually spared.

Members of the orchestras were permitted improvements in their lives at the camps, such as better rations and more adequate living quarters, but this and their performances, especially during particularly horrible moments, incurred the animosity of their fellow prisoners. The musicians themselves were often disgusted and depressed at having to entertain their captors and at being forced to play while others suffered and died, and a number of musicians committed suicide.

But while Birkenau also had a men’s orchestra, it was the only camp that organized a women’s orchestra.

The women’s orchestra started out with about 20 women who were chosen for their musical skills. It grew in both number and experience over the months, reaching almost 50 members. After the death of conductor and violinist Alma Rosé, who had played an important role in protecting the musicians and ensuring the continuity of the orchestra, it declined and in October 1944 it was disbanded.

In November 1944 Esther Béjarano, along with the other Jewish members of the orchestras, was sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and in January 1945 they were transferred to the Ravensbruck labor camp. Shortly thereafter, in an attempt to conceal the camp’s activities and prisoners from the approaching Soviet troops, over 24,000 prisoners were forced on a death march to Mecklenburg in the north, in appalling conditions.

Esther was one of the only 3,500 survivors of that march. After the war she emigrated to Palestine, but in 1960, she and her husband and family returned to Germany where she actively spoke out against fascism and racism. She was a co-founder of the International Auschwitz Committee, in which she was very active, and wrote several autobiographies. Through music, including Jewish folk music and hip-hop, she worked to inspire younger generations to stand up against fascism.

Esther Béjarano was highly regarded in Germany and received a number of awards including the Cross of Merit and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In recent years she warned about the rise of the extreme right and other groups with fascist and nationalist goals. She always reminded young people that “You are not guilty of what happened back then. But you become guilty if you refuse to listen to what happened.”

May she rest in well-deserved peace and may her memory always inspire us to carry her work forward.

Till next time,
Be safe, everyone.