From the depths of Auschwitz to “First Lady of the Harpsichord”

Warning: This article references suicide

“I transcribed a little Sarabande by Bach from the E Minor Suite which I loved onto a piece of notepaper. And I always had it with me. And when we arrived in Auschwitz and were put on these cars which transported us to the camp, I had this with me; and read it, because it was somehow essential to me to get this back. And a wind came and took it away from me, and my mother sprang from the car, retrieved the paper, and returned again to the car”.

Zuzana Růžičková is known as one of the world’s leading harpsichordists and interpreter of classic and baroque music. Born in former Czechoslovakia, she began piano lessons at the age of nine. After being introduced to the works of Bach by her first piano teacher, she was later encouraged to take up the harpsichord, which would become her preferred instrument. Following the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, she and her family were forcibly detained and sent to Theresienstadt, where she attended concerts and joined a children’s choir. Yet, when her mother was due to be deported to Auschwitz- Birkenau, Růžičková volunteered to go with her. On the transport, she transcribed a Bach piece onto paper: a material memory that she would later describe as a “talisman” for her survival in the camp.[i] As the allied liberation of Poland approached, she and her mother were then sent to work as labourers in subcamps in Hamburg, and eventually to the overcrowded Bergen-Belsen concentration camp before her eventual liberation in 1945.

Whilst the impact of the war had halted her progress as a musician, she began to play the piano again and regain her skills. Though her Judaism and refusal to join the Communist Youth Movement made her vulnerable to harassment under the communist regime she continued her career, winning international awards and scholarships. Her sheer determination to compose and perform music as a free woman, coincident with the death of Stalin, meant that was able to record music for international distribution, increasing her fame and association with the music of Bach. Růžičková passed away in 2017, leaving behind a musical legacy that earned her the gestural title of “first lady of the harpsichord”. Not only did she impact upon cultural memory as a survivor of three concentration camps but also as an acclaimed musician who, against all odds, made her mark as one of the best known European-Jewish artists from this period. Ultimately, music became Růžičková’s salvation from her trauma and survivor’s guilt, as outlined in her post-war testimonies.

(Unless otherwise stated, the testimony used throughout this article have been taken from Zuzana Růžičková’s oral history interview for United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1991)

Zuzana Růžičková was born on 14 January 1927 in Plzeň, a town in former Czechoslovakia. Her family were relatively affluent and owned a department store, and whilst historically Jewish, her mother was orthodox, but her father was an atheist. She was raised liberally but took pleasure in celebrating Jewish holidays and occasions where the family would sing together; she attended Catholic ceremonies as well. Despite her love for the musical elements of these celebrations, Růžičková did not identify as being particularly religious. She was a bright child who loved reading and singing, from folk songs to arias from operas. It was soon recognised that Růžičková had musical talent but, despite her happy childhood, she suffered from illness. She recalled: “At one time when I was 9 years old, I had bad pneumonia. My parents were really worried — I had a high fever. My mother said if you get well, you may have any wish you want. So then when I got well, I said I want to take piano lessons. That’s how it all began”. She first began piano lessons with Marie Provazniková, with whom she developed a close relationship. Provazniková encouraged her talent and enthusiasm for music, teaching her various forms and genres. Růžičková’s grandmother, who influenced her greatly, also had a love for music and regularly attended concerts and theatre performances with her grandchildren. Růžičková demonstrated a clear passion for Bach, leading her teacher to suggest she play the harpsichord: “I still have a little notebook where I recorded what we played, and it still amazes me; we sight-read through everything! She thought at first that I should play the organ. But then I had lung troubles, and the doctor said that it was too cold in churches. So, she said all right, you’ll learn the harpsichord”. Provazniková taught the promising young student from the ages of 9 to 13. She wrote to French-Polish musician Wanda Landowska, asking her to take Růžičková on as a student at the Ecole de Musique Ancienne in Paris once she had finished her schooling at the age of 15. Unfortunately, this hope was dashed because of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, when her family became affected by the Nuremburg laws. Provazniková, a Czech gentile, continued to teach Růžičková regardless: “The Germans came. She allowed me to keep coming, though I had to hide my star; and it was dangerous for her as well. She taught me until the last moment; until we went to the camp. She was a very courageous and beautiful woman”. Růžičková had a heightened sensitivity to noise which also affected her schooling. She later reflected that this was perhaps why she favoured the harpsichord, which she described as a “silent instrument”. As a sickly child, her mother was also very protective about her daughter’s health, which Růžičková believed contributed directly to her survival later in life: “it saved my life, insofar as when I went to the camp, I was a healthy child because of all her care”.

In 1941, the Gestapo began organising transports to move Jews from Plzeň to Terezin, where the camp’s first inmates, known as the Aufbaukommando, were tasked with converting the fortress and surrounding walled town into a concentration camp which became known as Theresienstadt. Růžičková and other Jewish children in her town were forced by the Gestapo to carry out the difficult task of distributing notification cards to those who had been selected for resettlement. She painfully recalled: “It was very, very terrible, because we children went in 'couples’, and had to bring the notices to people that they were to appear with 50 kg luggage. We had to hand the notice to the people. And the scenes were terrible. Some people screamed and some cried and some went mad. And some — we came to a home where the gas was on”. Yet, even under these extreme circumstances, life went on. She and the other members in her Zionist young group dreamed of life on a Kibbutz in Palestine, which she found to be a great help, along with her creative pursuits:

“And then of course, there was music. I was still studying with [Provazniková] and practicing and playing for all the festivities. I was the musician of the group”.

Then, in January 1942, the Růžičková family were gathered in an empty gymnasium in the centre of Plzeň before being forced on the transport to Terezin with no less than 5,000 others and eventually taken inside the walled fortress.

Theresienstadt was originally established to act as a smokescreen for how the Nazis were supposedly addressing the “Jewish question”. It appeared as a kind of “model community” for German, Czech and Austrian Jews, many of whom were intellects, scholars, artists, and part of the cultural elite. This would be advertised and seen by ‘critical’ observers from the West, giving the idea that life in the camp was flourishing, and comfortable. In fact, the Jews who were being interned there suffered enormously and, if they survived their time in Theresienstadt, were almost all sent onto other camps across occupied Europe. Living quarters were basic, disease was widespread and food rations extremely limited. Under the false premise of the camp being somewhere beneficial for the inmates, a “Council of Elders” was created, despite being primarily run by the SS. Women and children were housed in separate barracks from the men and, almost immediately upon her arrival, Růžičková was introduced to Freddy Hirsch, a 25-year-old German Jew who assumed responsibility for caring for the camp’s many children by arranging activities and exercise. Hirsch ran the two barracks designated for the youths named the Children’s Homes. On their meeting, she fondly reflected: “He saw that I was ill, so he immediately began to take care of me; gave me some medicine. He was a very crucial person for my whole life”.

Růžičková joined a small group of twelve children whom Hirsch taught to draw, to play games and provided with songs to sing. Whilst her experiences living in the Children’s Homes with Hirsh and the other children in Terezin were somewhat positive due to the activities provided, life continued to be extremely difficult for her family. Her mother experienced severe digestive problems due to the lack of nutritional food and her father, who she was permitted to visit once a week, suffered from depression having learned of the public hangings and violent actions against other male inmates that occurred in the camp. Eventually, her father was given a better work position in the camp which slightly improved things: “My father went into the so-called Ordnungsdienst, which was a sort of police. They took care that there was no crime or disorder and that the older people were taken of”. Unfortunately, her grandparents both perished in the camp, and their ashes thrown into a nearby river.

While Růžičková was unable to actively create or make music in the camp, given that there was only one piano to be shared amongst the many musicians who were interned there, she was able to start a group who would recite poetry and fictional stories: “I started another activity. Of course, I sang a lot; I had a group of children singing. And then one thing that I should have mentioned with my childhood, my father used to read to us when I was a child, and what he read to us was wondrous. He read us Odyssey and Iliad of Homer, and I think that is part of my makeup, this feeling of rhythm and meter. And so, I also started in Theresienstadt a group for recitation. That was a very common thing then, these voice bands. And we studied poems, and I divided the group into chorus and soloists — choral readings”. She was also able to smuggle some written music into her suitcase, including Bach's French Suites, and Dvořák's Serenade in A Major, which was the last piece that she had played with her tutor Provazniková.

In Terezin, Růžičková carried on her Zionist activities, and took on administrative duties listing the names of new arrivals of children and passing on messages. She also performed agricultural tasks which she preferred, as it took her outside of the camp walls. Despite the physical demand of the labour, Růžičková referred to this period as being her “happiest time in Theresienstadt”. Similarly, she lived for the evenings which were, as she recalls, full of cultural activities: “Almost every house had an attic where something was going on - lectures or lessons in Hebrew. There was a piano, a string quartet, a former first violinist of the Czech Philharmonic, wonderful pianists”. Yet, the notion of transports to the East kept the inmates in a constant state of worry, as did the speculations that those who were deported were being sent to their deaths. She recalled: “One of the most sadistic things the Germans did was to leave the choice of who would go to the Council. So, they tried not to send families where all the members were still alive. Only where somebody had already died”.  

On 10^th May, Růžičková was informed that her father was dying. Unable to operate, camp doctors could only provide painkillers, leaving her and her mother in a deep state of grief: “Then it all ended. My mother was desperate. She wanted to take her life too. I was desperate too. I felt deserted even by her because I thought she wanted to leave me too. I was too childish to understand it”.

Somehow, life went on for Růžičková. She continued her work and education, and even had romantic pursuits. By 1943, rumours surrounding the end of the war circulated, raising morale and determination to survive until the allied liberation. She recalled the visitation of the Swiss Red Cross, in preparation for which the Nazi’s began to “tidy” up the camp. Růžičková noted that they even retrieved a group of children previously deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, although the children were so traumatised that they were “sent back” to the death camp. She noted: “At that point the idea that people were being exterminated became real; I half believed it and half didn't”. Eventually, in December 1943, the time came for her mother to be transported to Auschwitz. Although she was given the chance to stay with her Zionist group in Theresienstadt, Růžičková decided to go with her mother: “So, we went. That's the end of the Terezin era”.

Růžičková and her mother were put onto overcrowded trucks bound for Poland: “Hell started immediately. Of course, we had been afraid for so long, seeing people leave, seeing the packing up; in a way it was routine. But it was terrible because you were again leaving some part of your life that you had built up even under those terrible conditions”. In the cramped, desperate, and inhumane conditions of the transports,

Růžičková recalled transcribing a small section of Bach’s English suite No 5 in E Minor on a scrap of paper: “I wanted to have a piece of Bach with me as a sort of talisman because I didn’t know what was awaiting us”.

As she was unable to take any of her smuggled music sheets with her from Terezin, she had to do this from memory: “A funny thing about my musical talent…I didn't have any memory; I couldn't memorize things at all. When I played, I always played from notes. And my mother said: How do you think she's going to be a concert artist when she can't memorize? And [Provazniková] said, very quietly: Well, this will develop. And now, you know, my memory is really very, very good. I have all the Bach works; and I’m perhaps the only harpsichordist who plays her recitals only from memory. So, she was right”.

When they arrived in Auschwitz, she held the piece of music in her hand. She recalled the wind carrying the scrap of paper away, and her mother springing from the transport to retrieve it: “We were almost separated that way, but she knew what it meant to me, this piece of music. But then, of course, there was no music, no music at all”. She would keep this remnant of Bach’s music with her throughout her time in the camp. After being unloaded from the trucks, the pair were stripped naked and tattooed with an identification number. For Růžičková, this number was 72389. Her group encountered a selection of male prisoners, amongst whom was Freddy Hirsh from the Children’s Home in Terezin. He told her to state that she was sixteen years old, rather than fifteen. Had she not lied about her age, it was likely that she would have been gassed immediately. She was housed in the “Family Camp”, comprised primarily of the children and families brought to Auschwitz from the Theresienstadt: “There the families were allowed to stay together, though the barracks were of course separate. And the children were kept alive. The whole idea of the family camp was a charade - for appearances. Three weeks before they were gassed, people had to write postcards to their families in Theresienstadt or Prague or Plzeň, telling them they were well”.

As had been the case in Theresienstadt, Freddy Hirsh oversaw the organisation of the children’s barracks. Růžičková began working there as a teaching assistant, which protected her from disease and starvation. The children were able to participate in lessons and activities to keep them entertained. Hirsh was also able to save many of those who had taken ill from being selected to be gassed: “Freddy himself usually came in around four o'clock, and he had a recorder, and he played the recorder for us. And every day he taught the children another song — German, Czech, Hebrew; canons and things like that — with the recorder. So we tried to keep up some sort of life”. Yet, the children were not altogether sheltered from the horrors of the camp: “Of course, all the children did hear or had an inkling of the gas chambers because they were burning all the time. And there was a terrible stench; you saw the fires… People my age, sitting there and wondering, and there were terrible things I can't even tell you about”. 

During her time in Auschwitz, Růžičková was able to stay with her mother in the evenings, who provided much emotional strength: “I came home and had nightmares and cried; and said: I don't want to die, I want to live. I can't imagine what it must have been for her. She stayed strong for me. She was an amazing character, always there for me to weep in her arms”. Rumours of an uprising began to circulate, and Růžičková recalled the children asking to dance one last time before this might take place. They were met with the response: “You will dance yourself to death. Anyway, the SS would take you, and you will have many more chances to dance in your life; something will happen!”.

However, the developments of the war influenced her fate once more. On 6^th June 1944, the Nazis had planned to gas the remaining prisoners from Růžičková’s transport, but this coincided with the events of D-Day. The group were spared their impending deaths, and she and her mother selected to be sent to Hamburg in Germany to ‘assist’ the German war efforts: “So there were selected out of the 5000 people in the camp who should have been gassed. And a thousand men and a thousand women were selected for going to work in Germany — slave labour”.

Růžičková and her mother were assigned work in the subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp in the surrounding area of Hamburg and the city’s shipyards. This included protecting and repairing an oil pipeline and maintaining gas tanks which were being regularly bombed by the British and American allies in the final weeks of the war. They were able to remain together, but the working conditions were extreme and dangerous and food rations scarce.  Růžičková nearly went blind after contact with a harsh chemical, and she was also severely underweight by this time. Luckily, she was able to earn extra food from other prisoners by singing for them. She reflected:

“The only way I could earn something more to eat was that I could sing. And that I had a wealth of songs; and the most popular were the Voskovec and Werich songs. So, when the day for packages came, and people had some food, they would ask me to come and sing for them”.

Eventually, the condition of the skin on her hands deteriorated as a result of the manual labour. She remembered: “There was one terrible experience where we were working in a shipyard, and we were taken to a dining room where the workers got their soup. And the radio was on, and somebody was playing Chopin; I fainted. I couldn't bear the thought that somewhere in this world there was somebody making music…it was too much”. On the same day as her seventeenth birthday in January 1945, Růžičková was sent to work in the Tiefstack cement factory, where she was also forced to dig booby-traps for allied tanks.