Interview with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch in conversation with Norbert Meyn

In this interview the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch discusses her childhood in Breslau, studying cello with Leo Rostal in Berlin, being imprisoned for trying to escape to France, playing cello in the camp orchestra in Auschwitz, being liberated in Bergen-Belsen, arriving in Britain in 1946, starting to work as a musician in London, becoming a founder member of the English Chamber Orchestra and being part of a community of musical émigrés in London. She also speaks about her husband Peter Wallfisch, his career as a concert pianist and his time as a professor at the Royal College of Music, and about other émigrés including the violinist Maria Lidka and the pianist Alice Herz-Sommer.

This interview is presented as part of the ORAL HISTORY PROJECT "Singing a Song in a Foreign Land", which focuses on musicians who emigrated from Central Europe because of Nazi persecution in the 1930s and 40s.

Visit the SINGING A SONG IN A FOREIGN LAND - ONLINE RESOURCE for more interviews and further information:

This project has been generously supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Rothschild Foundation