Alma Rosé was a celebrity and classical music royalty — Gustav Mahler was her uncle and her father was concertmaster for the Vienna Philharmonic. But, the next chapter of her life included: Nazis, the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, a prisoner’s orchestra, and saving lives.

Hear the incredible story of Alma Rosé from experts Dr. Michaela Raggam-Blesch, Dr. Heidemarie Uhl, and Dr. Monika Sommer.

 In this episode, you’ll:

• Learn about the celebrated Mahler-Rosé family’s life in Vienna

• Understand Alma’s struggles before and after the Nazis came to power in Austria

• Admire how she was instrumental in the survival of her father and dozens of others

• Hear the stunning story of the Women’s Orchestra in Auschwitz-Birkenau

• Listen to a performance of Alma’s song of hope

For the best experience, please watch the video at the top of the page.

Episode Transcript

DANIEL ADAM MALTZ:  Grüß Sie from Vienna, Austria. Welcome to Opus 7 of Classical Cake, the podcast where we discuss topics relating to Viennese classical music and culture while enjoying one of Vienna's delicious cakes. I'm your host Daniel Adam Maltz.

Today, we are commemorating the life of violinist Alma Rosé.

She was born into Viennese music nobility as the daughter of Arnold Rosé, the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, and her uncle was Gustav Mahler.

But what happened in her life that made her friend, Anita Lasker Wallfisch, say 'Gustav Mahler stood at her cradle, Josef Mengele at her deathbed'?

To share Alma Rosé's story, I have several guests.

Dr. Michaela Raggam-Blesch, is from the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. She is an Elise Richter fellow.

Dr. Heidemarie Uhl is a member of the Austrian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and a member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the House of Austrian History. She is a historian at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

And, Dr. Monika Sommer is the director of the Haus der Geschichte Österreich, or House of Austrian History.

Thank you all for joining me.

ALL: Thank you.

Featured sweet: Hamantaschen

MALTZ: Given the subject matter, we’ll have Hamantaschen.

Many Jewish people eat Hamantaschen during Purim, a holiday that commemorates the first written account of attempted genocide against the Jewish people.

Musical royalty in the Rosé family

MALTZ: Tell us a bit about Alma Rosé’s family.

DR. HEIDEMARIE UHL:  Arnold Rosé, her father... It is a kind of typical story of coming from the margins of a monarchy into the center and becoming something like an assimilated Jewish family.

And he was, for 57 years, concertmaster or first concertmaster of the Hofopernorchester and later the Staatsopernorchester [Vienna Philharmonic] and that is an incredibly long time.

He also started very early — one year after he was employed at the Hofopernorchester — started his Rosé Quartet. They were very well known at the time.

Interesting is also the name Rosé. Because the original name was Rosenblum and they decided to integrate themselves in mainstream society. They decided to change their name from Rosenblum to Rosé and also to change from Jewish to Protestant religion. Because you only could make a career if you decided to become a Catholic or… many of Jewish descent decided to take on the Protestant religion.

MALTZ: Right. And so, Arnold Rosé was also given the Austrian Cross of Merit for Art and Science in 1935.

UHL: He got many, many, many of these honors… a very respected musician. And he also was a star of his time. They were in the magazines of the times, the stars of the Salzburg Festspiele, as so on and so far. They were celebrities, you could say.

Alma forging her own path

MALTZ: Alma founded the Wiener Walzermädel, embarking upon a successful 8-month tour in 28 cities, including four weeks Berlin – where the Nazi’s had just come to power.

How did audiences receive her and her group?

DR. MICHAELA RAGGAM-BLESCH: I think this was a very crucial step for Alma because she was getting married in 1932 to Váša Příhoda, the star violinist. And, I think Alma at no point had an interest of just becoming his wife and having him make his career. So she was very ambitious and I think that caused, probably very early on, tensions within this marriage.

And then also the position being this daughter of this very, very famous musician, Arnold Rosé. And then her brother actually started to make a career as a conductor and, of course, Gustav Mahler, she's always referred to… and then having this very famous husband.

It was very important to her and you can see this ambition by her idea to create something new for herself. And the Walzermädeln was something very unique and she was super professional about publicizing it. And this was her way of making a name for herself and a career.

She made her debut when she was hardly 20 years old, just before her 20th birthday. She was also publicized in a newspaper and, very characteristically, the first sentence in the review in the Neue Freie Presse was not about Alma Rosé, this new musician and what a great debut. The first sentence of the review was, ‘it was a triumph for Arnold Rosé.’

Well, you could really sense that she really needed to find her own path and by founding this orchestra, this was a very unique setting. She really made a name for herself.

And your question was about Berlin. We actually found reviews that she was received very well in Berlin. It was actually the beginning of 1933, so just around the time right after the Nazi takeover in Germany and she was received very well. So it's interesting.

Impact of the Anschluss

MALTZ: What happened to Alma’s career when the Nazis came to power in Austria?

UHL: It was a difficult break. The first thing was it was forbidden for Jewish persons to be employed anymore. That was the case with Arnold Rosé – he was immediately kicked out of the orchestra a few days after the Anschluss.

And, of course, Alma also had no kind of opportunity to earn some money with her orchestra. It was immediately dissolved by the Nazis. And that was a huge problem – just how to survive these times without the possibility to earn money, without the possibility to leave the country for many of them.

For example, it was very hard for Arnold, who was nearly 75 years old, to get a visa for another country because somebody had to guarantee that he would be supported financially; otherwise, he wouldn't have possibility to flee to other countries like the UK or… The son managed to flee to Canada.

RAGGAM-BLESCH: To the United States first.

UHL: First, to the United States. He was the one who soon left the country as the first part of the family. And obviously, Alma felt a kind of responsibility for her father and also for her mother who was very sick. And they decided to leave the country only after the mother died, I think in August 1938.

Fleeing Vienna

MALTZ: On March 15, 1939, as you've mentioned, Alma fled Vienna. First she went to England and then to the Netherlands where she was offered a job.

In the book, there's a chapter called ‘Alma’s New Start in the Netherlands,’ but then two pages later, another chapter starts called ‘Trapped in the Netherlands.’ What happened?

RAGGAM-BLESCH: Well I think, first, one has to look at their flight to England, to Great Britain because they… that was actually a possibility of Alma. She – through her marriage with Váša Příhoda – she got Czech citizenship and that also enabled her to travel prior and kind of try to organize the escape for her and her father. And so she had much more possibility to move around freely.

And that was when we kind of figured out that she must have been able to bring out the very valuable instruments because her father had a Stradivari and she had also a very valuable Guadagnini. And she was probably during these travels… she already went to London. She tried to, she made a stop in the Netherlands and she tried to organize and get people to support them. And so she had to escape in March of ’39. She wanted to leave with her father, but it was not possible because then, of course, the Nazis also occupied the Czech Republic and she had to leave before her citizenship wouldn't be valid anymore.

And her father and joined her in May of ‘39 and both were there. The problem was that they had hardly possibilities to make a living. Because in Great Britain and England the music guild was very strong. And for all those musical refugees, they couldn't teach, they couldn't make a solo career, they could only play [in a] quartet. And a way to take up an engagement in the Netherlands was, for her, also something like a possibility to continue her musical career.

And, of course, for us in retrospective, we think she moved to the Netherlands in December of ‘39 and, of course, we know that May of 1940, the Netherlands was occupied. So for us, in retrospect, it's something that the decision is very much questionable. If you think, ‘Oh my God, she was already saved. Why did she do that?’

But thinking about the time, it's very important that you consider that this was – even for other musicians – there were other famous musicians who also were already in the UK and that decided to take up a musical engagement possibility in the Netherlands. It was something that was made quite plausible at the time. And the second reason that is expressed in a lot of the letters that remained with her brother is that she also felt the responsibility for her father. So that was also one of the reasons that she took up this engagement in the Netherlands – so she could make money and also support her father. So you kind of have to take both of these aspects into the picture.

MALTZ: At this point, Alma is getting desperate and time was working against her. Her brother, Alfred, secured an affidavit for her to move to the United States, but the Nazis closed American embassies before it could reach her.

On 10 December 1941, her passport was stamped with a red “J” for Jewish. And, the next day, Americans entered the war, so Alma lost contact with Alfred.

On 14 December 1942, she gave her violin to her boyfriend, and a portrait bearing the words “Must not be lost” and she fled.

She was caught at a train station in Dijon, France.

Arriving in Auschwitz

MALTZ: Alma arrived in Auschwitz with a transport of 1000 deportees. 440 were immediately murdered. Out of the 1000, only 52 survived the war.

Where did Alma go after the selection?

RAGGAM-BLESCH: Well, Alma was selected to be among the prisoners who became part of the infamous Block 10 where there were medical experiments undertaken. Dr. [Carl] Clauberg was very infamous for conducting these experiments.

But again, I mean you find that so often in her life within these dreadful circumstances, she was lucky. She was discovered as this famous musician. Even in Auschwitz, people could associate with the name Alma Rosé.

I mean this is the contradiction that many of the SS men loved classical music. So the name Rosé rang a bell with many of them. So they discovered Alma Rosé within this Block 10 and Maria Mandl who was heading the women's camp in Birkenau… This was also interesting is she was somebody who was probably not from a very musical background or cultural background. But, the Rosés were so much present in Austrian cultural life even for general masses being in all these magazines. So she knew the name of Rosé, as well.

And for her, this was actually a way to… or she thought this was a way for her to advance her own career within the SS hierarchy to take on Alma Rosé. And she made her director of the women's orchestra.

How Alma saved lives in Auschwitz-Birkenau

RAGGAM-BLESCH: Alma Rosé pretty soon understood these dynamics that somehow the orchestra meant something to Maria Mandl for her own career. So she could start getting some small – privileges is maybe too much to say – but advantages for the prisoners who were members of the orchestra. For example, she was able to get an oven in the barracks of Birkenau, which is unheard of, and she could convince Maria Mandl to do so because she convinced her that the instruments the orchestra was using would suffer in the winter if they didn't have an oven. So this was the way of her to kind of get small privileges, which made all the difference for the members of the orchestra.

And what Alma also was able to do is… most of the members of her orchestra were actually young women, sometimes even teenagers who just played an instrument for a few years. So she could actually convince Maria Mandl that it's important that they have enough time to train. So she actually managed, and this is a crucial difference that the members of the orchestra… they didn't have to go out for the workforce. They could stay within the barracks and learn music all day and train.

Because Alma Rosé understood that by training very hard, by making the orchestra professional, the orchestra will be needed. And she saw this as a way of saving the members of the orchestra. And she also took on… made a point of accepting particularly Jewish prisoners.

And some of them even were not musicians. She tried to expand that the orchestra and with Maria Mandl, she tried to make a point that even people to write music would be necessary, so she could expand the orchestra in numbers and was able to save quite a number of people. Most of the members of this orchestra were able to survive.

The role of the Auschwitz Women’s Orchestra

MALTZ: What was the women’s orchestra responsible for?

RAGGAM-BLESCH: Well, the responsibilities were that they had to get up very early in the morning and play at the gate for the women that went out to the workforce and then in the evening had to be at the gate again and play again.

This orchestra was also doing concerts on Sundays, which is also somehow unusual. Because, of course, having an orchestra at Birkenau is something where two realities that don't go together like the realm of music, of culture and then the realm of the burning crematories and the gas chambers of Birkenau. Which Birkenau, of course, very much symbolizes.

In fact, the barracks where the music block was was very much in view of the two main crematories of Birkenau.

Having both of the crematoria burning day and night in front of their windows… this was a reality that one could not escape in Birkenau.

And some of the surviving orchestra members particularly, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch – a famous musician after the war as well – said that one of the great things [where] Alma made all the difference is that she trained so hard with them, that they didn't have to look out of the window. They could focus on the music. It was a way of surviving, not thinking all the time what was going on outside.

UHL: And they had, of course, to choose the pieces they wanted to play with what this SS and what Nazi organizations within the camp wanted to hear. For example, if one of the SS officers came into the barracks of the women's orchestra and said, ‘I want to hear this and that,’ they had to do this.

Alma’s song of hope

UHL: So it was very directly oriented to what the authorities in the camp [wanted], but there was one piece that was kind of resistance…

RAGGAM-BLESCH: Yes, it was In mir klingt ein Lied (A song rings out within me) and, at that time, it was this Chopin étude that was made into a popular song in the 30s.

And Alma [took] up this text and made something else out of it and kind of rewrote… It's similar lyrics, but the message is very subtle. Very much a feeling of hope or freedom…

UHL: Freedom. For being liberated and living again free.

RAGGAM-BLESCH: And this is something that the SS picked up on. So they were performing this piece and – there were not only instrumentalists in the orchestra, but there were also singers – and the SS kind of understood this subtle message and they actually forbade the orchestra to perform it. They could only perform it instrumentally from then on.

And this became somehow very… some of the surviving orchestra members refer to this song and still associate it a lot with Alma and their time in Birkenau. And it was somehow an act of resistance, [they] still secretly performed this piece of music in the barracks.

[Music playing]

The contradiction of the SS loving classical music

MALTZ: What you said… what is interesting is the sort of two sides of Auschwitz-Birkenau of being a death camp and then the people running this also having a taste for classical music, this high art.

And, you know, we like to think of evil being completely evil, but somehow these two things being very close to each other, it's a little bit unsettling.

RAGGAM-BLESCH: Very much so. Yeah. And we know that (Josef) Mengele had a very advanced musical taste and he spent a lot of time in this orchestra and… What is this famous scene that Anita Lasker-Wallfisch had to play a [Schumann] piece for him, I think on her cello? And, yeah, it is very much irritating.

But, it's also a reality that we kind of have to be aware that the Holocaust has all these complex aspects and perpetrators and they were people who sometimes had a very good musical taste. They were cultured people and at the same time could torture prisoners and send them to their deaths very easily. This is unsettling and it's a truth that we have to kind of think about.

A mysterious death

MALTZ: On 2 April, 1944, Alma fell ill. Josef Mengele himself ordered tests to treat her illness. But, she died soon after. How was her death treated?

RAGGAM-BLESCH: Well, her death, it's such a mystery because what is now the most valid explanation is that she died of food poisoning. And to die of food poisoning and, more particularly, of meat poisoning in a place like Auschwitz. And, more specifically, Birkenau is of course also a contradiction because you would not think that the prisoners would die of that.

And the reason is that Alma was the head of the women's orchestra and [there] was kind of a kapo function. So she also had a little bit more possibility or more freedom to go around the camp. And she was invited to the birthday party of one of the kapos who worked at the Kanadacommando.

At the Kanadacommando, people had access to food sometimes that people brought and – of course, this was forbidden – but still, things like that were crucial in the barter of Auschwitz and also in the survival, so people could exchange things for food or bread.

And at this birthday party, they served meat cans that somebody must've brought on their journey to Auschwitz. And these meat cans were served at this party. Alma had some of it and they must've been spoiled already.

So she died of… but her former orchestra members always kind of refer to it also that it was a death that is also a privilege. Right? She was not murdered in the gas chambers and at least she had the possibility to die in a bed and even though this bed was in the Revier in Birkenau and the Revier was not very like a hospital setting. It was a very poor medical supply that is what possible to give to people but at least she died on a bed.

And we have witness accounts… which is very unusual for Auschwitz and Birkenau, that the prisoners, her fellow orchestra members were able to say goodbye to her, which was unusual.

I mean, she didn't get a burial because, of course, we are still in Birkenau. She was then cremated, but at least there was this moment of dignity that she was given.

DR. MONIKA SOMMER: The interesting thing is you still have a grave in Vienna. The graveyard is in Grinzing and Alma’s name is written on the stone. We think that it was her brother because he came back to Vienna in the 70’s and he always cared for the grave of his parents. And you'll see also the name Alma Rosé on the stone.

MALTZ: Interesting.

UHL: And also a street was named after her at the end of the 1960s in Vienna.

SOMMER: Yes.

Alma’s violin – and the story that must not be lost

MALTZ: So, the orchestra got a new leader and most members survived. In the meantime, Arnold and Alfred Rose heard nothing since 1942. However, in June 1945 a friend of Alma’s sent her brother, Alfred, a telegram letting him know about Alma’s death. Her violin was still in safe hands. Where is it now?

SOMMER: The history of the instrument was also very interesting for us, so we did not only research on the life of Alma and Arnold Rosé, but also on the history of the instruments. On the Stradivari, on the one hand, and of the Guadagnini on the other hand.

And we also knew that the Stradivari still exists and that the instrument is still in use. And we got in contact with Benjamin Schmid who plays the Stradivari, the Rosé Stradivari, at the moment.

And we tried to get in contact also with Zakhar Bron who is the owner of Alma’s Guadagnini, and it was kind of a little dream to bring both instruments together again. We couldn't manage this right now, but both instruments are still in use. So it's a kind of a good fact that they are not here in our museum.

MALTZ: Yeah.

RAGGAM-BLESCH: As you mentioned before, the last note before she escaped the Netherlands, her last act was to give her violin, her most precious thing.

And you can see this very close relationship both musicians have with these instruments. And with the last note… should not be lost.

And, in a way, her wish came true. Right? Because it didn't get lost and it was actually that a former pupil of Arnold Rosé then bought this instrument, and he knew Alma. So there was also the first musician that played this instrument and now I'm blanking on his name…

UHL: Felix Eyle.

RAGGAM-BLESCH: Thank you. Felix Eyle. That he knew Alma. So he had this relationship and even named the instrument, the Guadagnini Alma in memory of the daughter of his former teacher.

And so her wish really came true that the instrument was not lost and also this… her story was not lost in the end.

MALTZ: That as we've said, music has always been through the worst times of humanity and through the best times, but that it's still continuous.

How to show the Alma Rosé exhibit in your area

SOMMER: So maybe if somebody is interested in taking over the exhibition, they should contact us. It's really easy to take it over. You just need 16 stands where you can put on the information plates and we can send it in a digital way. So it's really possible to take it over everywhere in the world.

The Alma Rosé Plateau

UHL: And just one sentence about the remembrance of Alma Rosé. It was a Monika Sommer's decision at the opening of the new museum to name this plateau, to give it the name Alma Rosé.

SOMMER: Because maybe you know that the place where the exhibit was shown is in the middle of two very interesting places. On the one hand, you have the balcony where Adolf Hitler announced the so-called Anschluss on the 15th of March 1938, so just one year before Alma left. And, on the other hand, you've got the Collection of Old Instruments.

MALTZ: As Dr. Sommer mentioned, in the Neue Burg, there is a beautiful space renamed the Alma Rosé Plateau. Visit.

While there, I highly suggest you visit the House of Austrian History and the Collection of Historic Musical Instruments, as all are housed in the same building.

Dr. Sommer, Dr. Uhl, Dr. Raggam-Blesch, thank you for sharing this Classical Cake with me.

ALL: Thank you. Thank you for your interest.