Book Review: Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz

May 26, 2007 at 6:17 AM

Alma Rose was an incredible human being. After spending the last few evenings immersed in her biography "Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz", I was touched by her ability to use her violin to transcend the evil around her.

Alma was born into the musical elite of turn-of-the-last-century Vienna, the capital of arts and music in Europe. Her uncle was Gustav Mahler and her father, Arnold Rose, the famous concertmaster and conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. She had a fabled childhood surrounded by musicians and artists.

Alma studied violin from her father at an early age and later with Sevcik. She toured Europe as concertmistress of an all women's orchestra she organized, and was briefly married to violin virtuoso Vasa Prihoda.

All of the fame and glamour ended however when she was captured and interned in the dreaded Auschwitz. Fearing that she was about to be eliminated she asked for her last wish to be able to play the violin. Word quickly spread that she was the Alma Rose of the Rose Quartet and before she knew it, the camp supervisor, assigned her to lead a women's orchestra. For many of the players, the orchestra was the only chance of survival. Alma took pity on people who auditioned and tried to fit them in, whether it was as accordion player, or guitarist, or if they had no playing talent, as copyist and scribe. She took her job seriously, practicing 10-12 hours a day in addition to giving "concerts". All this was under the constant stress and threat of elimination if they did not prove their worthiness to the SS in charge.

Alma maintained a musicality, and in those moments while playing music, they were transported out of their nightmare and back to the preWar Vienna, playing in a cafe. The music also affected both SS and prisoners alike, and on the Sunday concerts, prisoners strained to hear and grasp a small slice of beauty while SS overlords sat in the front row weeping with emotion. How they could love music so much and then turn around and kill mercilessly was beyond the comprehension of the survivors.

Alma saved the lives of many women, and even though she perished, her bravery and dedication lives on in the stories of the survivors she helped.

The author Richard Newman based the book on firsthand knowledge, primary sources such as letters and interviews with survivors, relatives, friends and contemporaries. He maintained a historical accuracy and honest portrayal of Alma's life. You will be touched while unable to grasp the enormity of the horrors that faced the people who were interned in the death camps.

I read this book alongside with "Night" by Elie Wiesel who arrived at Auschwitz shortly before Alma's death. Both books are highly recommended although extremely sad, they show the resilience of the human spirit in absolutely horrible conditions.

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on May 26, 2007 at 7:55 AM

Greetings,
it`s also worth reading Viktor Frankl- Man`s search for meaning, which givves a complimentary account of the horror and the thinking processes of the peopel cocnerned as events unfolded. Uplifting rather than depressing.
Cheers,
Buri

From Stephen Brivati
Posted on May 26, 2007 at 7:55 AM

From Emily Grossman
Posted on May 26, 2007 at 9:29 AM

I liked Frankl's book, though I didn't finish it. He wrote something so deeply profound and convicting, about halfway through the book, that I had to stop reading and think about it. I'm still thinking about it.

From Anne Horvath
Posted on May 26, 2007 at 1:18 PM

Very nice review, Clare. More good books:

"The Inextinguishable Symphony: A Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany", By Martin Goldsmith. This one is beautifully written.

"The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich", by Michael H. Kater. This one has a no-holds-barred style.

I think Primo Levi's "Survival in Auschwitz" is worth mentioning too.

From David Russell
Posted on May 26, 2007 at 2:51 PM

In the Alma Rose orchestra recreation I mentioned as part of Amnon Weinstein's violins of the Holocaust project, there is another component where the chapter from Eli Wiesel's book reounting how a violinist in a concentration camp played Beethoven before he died the next day... In the concert, Shlomo Mintz plays a movement of Beethoven Kreutzer Sonata following the reading.
Very profound and riveting.

From Paul Reverter
Posted on May 26, 2007 at 4:08 PM

Instead of the whole, the consummated, of which I dreamed, I leave patchwork, the incomplete, as man is fated to do...I meant well and aimed at high goals. Not always could my efforts be crowned with success...But I have always given my all have subordinated my person to the cause, my inclinations to my duty. I didn't spare myself and was therefore justified in demanding that others, too exert their strengths to the utmost."
Gustav Mahler's farewell to the "Honored Members of the Court Opera," posted at the opera house, 1907 and found a day later crumpled, torn and on the floor.

Alma Rosé was born in 1906, the daughter of Gustav Mahler's sister, Justine, and Arnold Rosé, the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic from the 1880's until 1938. The Rosé household was a veritable Who's Who of musical personalities from Brahms to Schoënberg, Mahler, Strauss, Bruno Walter, Berg, and Webern.

The venerable Rosé String Quartet, whose recordings from the 20's are still available, rehearsed at home, and Alma Rosé had music in her ears continually. "The Rosé's," wrote violinist Leila Doubleday, "were a family distinguished by their vitality, talent, and devotion to others." Alma, whose namesake was her aunt Alma Mahler, Gustav's wife, had among her school friends the violinist Erica Morini. Her marriage to Czech violinist Vasa Prihoda catapulted her to musical stardom.

The Mahler's and Rosé's appeared to live charmed lives, but for Jews, even those who made little of their ancestry, tensions could erupt at any time. Mahler and his sister Justine were baptized in the Catholic Church to ensure his appointment as director of the Vienna Opera in 1897. Whether it was anti-semitic pressures that led to his 1907 departure for New York has long been a subject for lively debate.

The early chapters of this rich biography present a colorful and detailed chronicle of musical and intellectual life in Vienna at the turn of the century. The Rosé's, caught up in their lives among the artistic elite, seemed to have little understanding of the political realities surrounding them. When Arnold Rosé, along with his Jewish colleagues, was abruptly dismissed from the Vienna Philharmonic after the German Anschluss in 1938, he was taken totally by surprise. His 1939 escape to London and the subsequent years, including his attempt to reestablish the Rosé Quartet in England emerge as a painful end to a distinguished career.

Alma's own career as a violinist began with daily lessons with her father, to whom she determined at an early age to be a worthy successor. Like all her father's students, she was forbidden to play children's games in which she might injure her hands. She made her debut in 1926 with the Vienna Opera Orchestra, playing the Beethoven Romance in F, the Bach Double Concerto with her father, and the Tschaikovsky violin concerto. A later performance of the Bach Double with her father is the only known recording of Alma Rosé playing the violin.

While Alma was not by all accounts a major talent as a violinist, she nevertheless brought a serious work ethic to her music making. Two years into her lonely marriage to Prihoda in 1932 she formed her female orchestra the "Wiener Walzermädelne," the Vienna Waltzing Girls, which toured northern Europe. "Alma," according to Ingeborg Tonneyck-Müller, one of the members of her orchestra, "was a tremendous rarity. Women simply did not do what Alma was doing in those days." Stories of rehearsals suggest a director who placed almost impossibly rigorous demands on her players, including playing everything from memory.

After the Nazi annexation of Vienna in 1938, Alma and her father subsisted in London, among other out-of-work musicians with the help of friends and charity. Concerned for her aging parent and desperate for work, Alma was able to find a theatre job in Holland, and to give occasional house concerts. However, Alma was not an easy person to live with in the best of times, and the stays with her accommodating hosts, often in cramped quarters, with inadequate heat and food, were fraught with tension.

In 1942 Alma's Holland visa expired, and unwilling to face unemployment in London, she was forced to flee to occupied France. Captured finally in Dijon, she was transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and her life there is described in chilling detail.

Hers was an "Escape into Excellence." Her building of a women's orchestra, from a ragtag group with inappropriate instruments, to a musical organization giving regular concerts borders on the miraculous. She managed to establish and maintain the same uncompromising artistic standards her uncle Gustav Mahler had imposed on the Vienna Opera orchestra forty years before. Victor E. Frankel has aptly characterized Alma's life in the camp: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Alma's death in 1944, of an undiagnosed illness, was the final tragedy for Arnold Rosé. Forced to cancel his remaining concerts, he played his Stradivari violin for the last time on October 2, 1945. The violin was sold to finance his emigration to the United States, but instead he died quietly in his sleep in London.

This book abounds with well-chosen personal recollections and penetrating insights, not only about Alma Rosé's personal history, but also about the artistic, social and political scene throughout and after her relatively short life. When the Vienna Philharmonic appeared in London in 1947, Friedrich Buxbaum, long-time cellist of the Rosé Quartet returned to the orchestra, eager to play under the beloved Bruno Walter. After the first rehearsal tune-up Buxbaum stood up, "Dear Friends," he began, "I'm so happy to be invited to be with you again. I have heard you tuning. It's wonderful -- ganz Judenrein," (completely free of Jews) -- a bitter pun since rein also means "in tune." The response, bassoonist Hugo Burghauser remembered, was "deadly quiet." ###
Paul Hersh

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on May 27, 2007 at 5:24 AM

Thanks so much for the review. I don't have the courage to read a book about people in Nazi concentration camps.

From Terez Mertes
Posted on May 29, 2007 at 4:57 PM

Oh, Clare, I've got this book, too. Like others here, though, I don't quite have the resilence yet to read it. Just reading the cover and seeing the pics tore at my heart, and now, hearing her name, I always get a lump in my throat.

But thanks for reminding me about this powerful book... (Anne - I also have The Inextinguishable Symphony and the same thoughts apply.)

From Terez Mertes
Posted on May 29, 2007 at 5:04 PM

Speaking of books, musicians and the Holocaust, I HIGHLY recommend a book (fiction) that someone recommended on my "Music Novels" blog a few months ago. Norman Lebrecht's The Song of Names. Soooooo well done, interesting, compelling, uses flashback to tell the story of two boys in London during WWII. Lousy explanation, but Lebrecht's subtle touch on how the Holocaust affected a London refugee is amazingly well done. Honestly, I'm just reeling from the impact of this novel. (And if you check it out at Amazon, just ignore the first reader's review - clearly it is a very angry non-reader who is/was pissed off at Lebrecht for his scathing music reviews. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the novel, which is a marvelous debut effort. Trust me, I'm a picky reader.)

From Clare Chu
Posted on May 30, 2007 at 6:00 AM

Thanks for all the book recommendations. I'm sure there's a paper or thesis somewhere to be written about violins and suffering, or transcending suffering. Terez, thanks for the recommendation on the novel. I just finished another WWII novel called "The Book Thief", no violin, but an accordion that brought events and situations together.

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Book Review: Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz

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