The last survivor of the Auschwitz women’s orchestra has died

Esther Bezarano, one of the last survivors of his female orchestra Auschwitz, died at the age of 96, wrote today on Twitter the head of the “Anne Frank Training Center”.

Bezarano, who played the accordion in the Auschwitz orchestra, died Friday night through Saturday, according to Meron Mendel, head of the Frankfurt-based organization.

“Esther Bezarano survived Auschwitz because she played the accordion in the camp orchestra. “She dedicated her life to music and to the fight against racism and anti-Semitism,” he wrote.

“An important voice has left in the fight against racism and anti-Semitism,” German Foreign Minister Haiko Maas wrote on Twitter.

“Paying tribute to” her liveliness and her incredible history, we will miss her voice, “the minister wrote.

Born in 1924 in Surrellis, Bezarano was sent to the Nazi concentration camp in April 1943 before being transferred to another camp in Ravensbrück in November of that year.

Her parents and sister were killed by the Nazis.

After World War II, Bezarano went to Palestine and lived in Israel for almost 15 years before returning to Germany, where in recent years she had warned of the rise of the far right.

“For those who have lived through it, it is impossible to describe how serious it is,” the rise of Germany’s far-right AfD party and the anti-Islamic Pegida movement said.

Bezarano also wrote a number of autobiographies and worked for the Auschwitz International Commission.

She was recruited to participate in the Auschwitz Women’s Orchestra, whose members played the piano, not the accordion.

The orchestra played for the prisoners in the camp and for the deportees who arrived there by train.

Bezarano told Deutsche Welle radio in 2014: “You knew they would be exterminated in the gas chambers and all you could do was stay there and play.”