The Last Musician of Auschwitz

A Different Approach to Holocaust Documentation

Trackman sought to create something distinctive amid the vast catalog of Holocaust films. Inspired by his experience at Berlin's Holocaust Memorial, he wanted viewers to feel a similar sense of disorientation—keeping audiences "off-balance" without losing them completely. This approach mirrors the cognitive dissonance of music's presence in a death camp.

The film blends multiple elements: first-hand survivor accounts, archival recordings, written testimonies voiced by actors, and contemporary musical performances filmed in locations around Auschwitz. This multi-layered structure creates what Trackman describes as "a unique perspective" on the Holocaust.

Beyond Lasker-Wallfisch, the documentary highlights three other musicians whose stories illustrate different facets of music's role at Auschwitz. Ilse Weber, a singer-songwriter, created music that miraculously survived the Holocaust when her husband hid her letters and songs by burying them at Theresienstadt. After surviving and escaping, he returned to dig them up, refusing to believe she had been murdered. He eventually found their son Hanush, who had been sent to safety on the Kindertransport to Britain and later settled in Sweden, becoming a TV producer. Weber's husband gave these precious documents to Hanush, who found himself unable to examine them for approximately fifty years, too painful to confront.

The film also follows classical composer Szymon Laks, whose works are performed anew in the documentary, exploring themes of cultural memory and loss. Adam Kopycinski, another Polish composer featured in the film, has his music performed in what might be the documentary's most provocative setting—the former home of camp commandant Rudolf Höss, a location that directly connects to the 2023 film "Zone of Interest" and serves as a powerful symbol of reclamation.

The film navigates their stories non-chronologically, weaving together narratives that occurred at different times to create a cohesive exploration of music's function within the camp.

The Dual Nature of Music at Auschwitz

"The Last Musician of Auschwitz" reveals music's paradoxical position in the camp—simultaneously a tool of oppression and a means of survival. SS officers forced prisoners to perform for their entertainment, turning what should have been a source of beauty into a grotesque spectacle. Prisoner orchestras were required to play marches as slave laborers left and returned each day, transforming music into what many survivors described as "a grotesque form of torture."

For some prisoners like Simon Herscovici, whose testimony appears in the film through records from the Wiener Holocaust Library, seeing fellow prisoners—"like skeletons"—playing cheerful melodies created a profound disconnect. Herscovici described it as "a dreadful thing, like a hallucination," when he first arrived at the camp and heard upbeat music performed by the prisoner orchestra at the entrance.

Yet for musicians like Lasker-Wallfisch, playing the cello literally saved her life by making her valuable to camp authorities. Throughout the film, Lasker-Wallfisch's recollections appear alongside other testimonies, showing how music provided occasional moments of grounding and consolation even in unimaginable circumstances. The film captures her remarkable strength and what producer Suzy Klein calls her "magnetic defiance," occasionally showing her smoking a cigarette while recounting her experiences.

The film doesn't attempt to provide neat answers about this contradiction. Instead, it presents multiple perspectives on what music meant to different people in Auschwitz, acknowledging that "they all had very different opinions about what music meant and the fact that it was even there at all."

Filming at Auschwitz

The production team worked with the full cooperation of the Auschwitz Museum, though with strict boundaries about where performances could take place. They couldn't perform within the camp walls but found powerful symbolic locations in the surroundings.

One particularly striking scene features Adam Kopycinski's music performed in the grounds of Rudolf Höss's house, which backs onto the camp wall. Trackman describes this choice as "reclaiming that space and taking it over again." The decision to place a grand piano in the commandant's garden represented the production team's commitment to creating meaningful visual moments, with producer Deborah Lee and production manager Isobel Oram supporting Trackman's artistic vision despite the logistical challenges.

The filming process itself was emotionally challenging. Trackman recalls realizing he and his director of photography had spent 45 minutes filming in a gas chamber—a space most visitors pass through in less than two minutes. The director had initially been apprehensive about taking on the project, concerned about the emotional toll of spending a year immersed in the world of Auschwitz. However, he found that having a clear purpose and "literally having a camera to hide behind" provided a kind of shield during the filming process.

Remarkable Coincidences

The production experienced several extraordinary coincidences that seemed to connect past and present. Just before departure to Auschwitz, Trackman's original plan to shoot the film himself changed when he became ill. With only days before filming was to begin, he contacted Ricky, a cinematographer recommended to him but whom he had never met.

During their conversation, Trackman mentioned a vintage Soviet lens he planned to use, which prompted Ricky to share a remarkable discovery. Ricky Patel had been collecting vintage German lenses that had recently been researched by a company called Number Nine Optics. They had discovered that these lenses were engineered by a Jewish woman named La Sternfield, who had worked under house arrest during the Nazi regime before being sent to Auschwitz and murdered there. The team would now use lenses created by a victim of the camp to document and memorialize that very place—a powerful connection between past and present.

In another striking coincidence, executive producer Suzy Klein discovered during editing that pre-war footage used in the film contained images of her own grandfather dancing the hora with his siblings in a town called Monash. She had been viewing this footage of her grandfather for months without recognizing him, until her mother, researching family history, sent her the clip.

The film includes new performances of music created by camp victims, performed by contemporary musicians including Raphael Wallfisch, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch's son. These performances were filmed at emotionally significant locations around Auschwitz, creating what Trackman calls "a very physical experience" for viewers.

The documentary, scored by Jessica Dannheisser, who supervised musical performances filmed at the camp and created orchestral arrangements for the featured songs, has received five-star reviews from several broadsheet newspapers. Dannheisser notes that the week of recording performances around the camp "was a profoundly emotional week for everyone involved, and had particular resonance for me as a Jewish woman—several of my relatives were killed at Auschwitz and my aunt Paula is a Holocaust survivor."

"The Last Musician of Auschwitz" ultimately illuminates how music provided a lifeline, a form of resistance, and a way to preserve humanity in a place designed to destroy it. As the film demonstrates, music from this period continues to resonate today, carrying forward the voices of those who suffered.

The documentary is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.