Berlin: Esther Bejarano, a Survivor Auschwitz A death camp that used the power of music to fight anti-Semitism and racism in Germany has died. She was 96 years old.
Bejarano died peacefully in the early hours of Saturday Jewish Hospital In Hamburg, the German news agency DPA quoted ga board member Helga Obens as saying Auschwitz Committee In Germany, as the saying goes.
The cause of death was not given.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas paid tribute to Bejrano, calling him “an important voice in the fight against racism and anti-Semitism”.
Born in 1924 to the daughter of Jewish cantor Rudolf Löwey, who was then in French-occupied Saarlouis, the family later moved to Saarbrücken, where Bejarano enjoyed a musical and sheltered upbringing. Nazis came to power and the city was returned to Germany in 1935.
his parents and sister Mercy He was eventually deported and killed, while Bezranów was forced into forced labor before being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943.
There, she volunteered to be a member of the girls’ orchestra, playing the accordion every time trains full of Jews from across Europe arrived.
Bezzano would later say that music helped keep him alive in the infamous German Nazi death camp in occupied Poland and during the years following the Holocaust.
“We played with tears in our eyes,” she told The. recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.
“The new arrivals came waving and clapping us, but we knew they would be driven straight to the gas chamber.”
Because his grandmother was a Christian, Bejarano was later transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp and survived a death row at the end of the war.
In a memoir, Bezzano recalls her rescue by American soldiers, who gave her an accordion, which she played on the day American soldiers and concentration camp survivors gathered around a burning portrait of Adolf Hitler to celebrate. And danced. Allied Victory over the Nazis.
Bejarano moved to Israel after the war and married Nisim Bejarano. The couple had two children, Edna and Joram, before returning to Germany in 1960.
Once again faced with open antisemitism, Bejarano decided to become politically active, co-founding the Auschwitz Committee in 1986 to give survivors a platform for their stories.
He played Jewish tunes and Jewish resistance songs with his children in a Hamburg-based band they named a coincidence, and also with the hip-hop group Microphone Mafia for spreading anti-racism messages to German youth.
“We all love music and share a common goal: We are fighting against racism and discrimination,” she said AP About their collaboration across cultures and generations.
Bezzano received several awards, including Germany’s Order of Merit, which he called for his activism against “Nazis old and new”, citing fellow Holocaust survivor Primo Levi’s warning that “it happened, so it happens again”. could.”
Addressing young people in Germany and beyond, Bejarano used to say, “You are not to blame for what happened at that time. But you are guilty of refusing to listen to what happened.”
Bejarano died peacefully in the early hours of Saturday Jewish Hospital In Hamburg, the German news agency DPA quoted ga board member Helga Obens as saying Auschwitz Committee In Germany, as the saying goes.
The cause of death was not given.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas paid tribute to Bejrano, calling him “an important voice in the fight against racism and anti-Semitism”.
Born in 1924 to the daughter of Jewish cantor Rudolf Löwey, who was then in French-occupied Saarlouis, the family later moved to Saarbrücken, where Bejarano enjoyed a musical and sheltered upbringing. Nazis came to power and the city was returned to Germany in 1935.
his parents and sister Mercy He was eventually deported and killed, while Bezranów was forced into forced labor before being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943.
There, she volunteered to be a member of the girls’ orchestra, playing the accordion every time trains full of Jews from across Europe arrived.
Bezzano would later say that music helped keep him alive in the infamous German Nazi death camp in occupied Poland and during the years following the Holocaust.
“We played with tears in our eyes,” she told The. recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.
“The new arrivals came waving and clapping us, but we knew they would be driven straight to the gas chamber.”
Because his grandmother was a Christian, Bejarano was later transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp and survived a death row at the end of the war.
In a memoir, Bezzano recalls her rescue by American soldiers, who gave her an accordion, which she played on the day American soldiers and concentration camp survivors gathered around a burning portrait of Adolf Hitler to celebrate. And danced. Allied Victory over the Nazis.
Bejarano moved to Israel after the war and married Nisim Bejarano. The couple had two children, Edna and Joram, before returning to Germany in 1960.
Once again faced with open antisemitism, Bejarano decided to become politically active, co-founding the Auschwitz Committee in 1986 to give survivors a platform for their stories.
He played Jewish tunes and Jewish resistance songs with his children in a Hamburg-based band they named a coincidence, and also with the hip-hop group Microphone Mafia for spreading anti-racism messages to German youth.
“We all love music and share a common goal: We are fighting against racism and discrimination,” she said AP About their collaboration across cultures and generations.
Bezzano received several awards, including Germany’s Order of Merit, which he called for his activism against “Nazis old and new”, citing fellow Holocaust survivor Primo Levi’s warning that “it happened, so it happens again”. could.”
Addressing young people in Germany and beyond, Bejarano used to say, “You are not to blame for what happened at that time. But you are guilty of refusing to listen to what happened.”
.