ALMA ROSÉ

The Holocaust account of Gustav Mahler's niece, who went from being the musical heiress of Europe to conducting a

women's orchestra at Auschwitz. There was a fictional treatment of Alma Ros‚'s story in the1980 film Playing for Time, but Canadian journalist Newman and Oregon book publisher Kirtley build this impressive book with much documentation. We are shown Ros‚’s SS order of transport and the passenger list, as well as excerpts from correspondence and interviews with relatives, friends, and the camp performers she rescued from the death chambers. The grand opera of Ros‚'s life follows two acts—before and after Austria's Anschluss (union) with Nazi Germany. Ros‚ (n‚e Rosenberg) was born in Vienna to a distinguished musical family honored by Habsburg Emperor Franz Josef. Her relatives and friends formed a veritable Who's Who of Viennese musical society, a Jewish elite that was much resented by the larger Austrian culture as a foreign clan. Writing letters to try to get Ros‚'s father out of the country were such luminaries as Toscanini, Thomas Mann, and Einstein. Her father's legal and medical condition kept Ros‚ close enough to be arrested by the Nazis. The authors vividly portray every step in her riches-to-rags horrors: Ros‚'s group of inmates were at first chosen to become guinea pigs for experiments in mass sterilization by X-ray. “Faced with the unimaginable circumstances of the Experimental Block at Auschwitz, Alma resorted to the two tools at her disposal: her personality and her music.” These powerful tools ordered a piano, organized many performers into a troupe, and saved many lives. When Ros‚ herself sickened and died before liberation, Dr. Mengele actually tried to save her. Valuable materials include chapter notes, interviews, sources, a bibliography, the Mahler-Ros‚ family tree, a detailed list of the women's orchestra of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and a glossary of camp terms. This well-researched and highly readable biography provides a moving account of one woman’s confrontation with the

greatest horrors of the war. (60 photos)