Desert Island Discs - Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. One of the most distinguished members of the English Chamber Orchestra, she has toured all over the world with them.

However, as she will be telling Sue Lawley, up until the early 1980s, she always refused to visit one country - Germany. For it was from there that her Jewish parents were taken away by the Gestapo, never to be seen again. From the age of 18, she herself was taken away to Auschwitz. There, because she was able to play the cello, she survived, and played in the camp's orchestra. However, when she was later moved to Belsen, she nearly didn't. She'll be talking about playing in the orchestra at Auschwitz, about the importance of music in sustaining life both then and now, and about her feelings towards Germany and the Germans more than 50 years after the events of her early life.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Piano Sonata Opus 111 by Ludwig van Beethoven
Book: The History of the World by J M Roberts
Luxury: Cello

Published on Sunday, 25th August 1996.

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