This Paperback Book item from Amadeus Press was reviewed on 3-Nov-2008.
Search ISBN:1574670859 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz Reference Book. Classifications : General Theater Performing Arts Arts & Photography Subjects Books General AAS Theater Performing Arts Arts & Photography Subjects Books General Composers & Musicians Arts & Literature Biographies & Me . Click the following link to view the cover of Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz. Related topics: General. Theater. Performing Arts. Arts & Photography. Subjects. Books. General AAS. Theater. Performing Arts. Arts & Photography. requestid: a43cf3ce-525e-4fc0-a7b7-cf158a511ec1
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1) Paperback Book Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz by Amadeus Press. "Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz" by Richard Newman with Karen Kirtley is the kind of biography I enjoy most. The author provides the reader with not only a fascinating story of the Rose family but also brings to life the time in which these people lived. We see Alma´ s life as a privileged young girl and woman. The many twists and turns of fate, poor judgement and unfortunate circumstances brings her to Auschwitz toward the end of WW11. Her time in the concentration camp reveals a remarkable individual existing under the most inhuman conditions. Her talent and strength of character resulted in her saving the lives of many woman who were members in the women´s orchestra, of which she was the leader. An excellent, informative and ultimately powerful read.¤ 2) Paperback Book Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz by Amadeus Press. Alma Rose was an incredible human being. After spending the last few evenings immersed in her biography "Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz", I was touched by her ability to use her violin to transcend the evil around her.
Alma was born into the musical elite of turn-of-the-last-century Vienna, the capital of arts and music in Europe. Her uncle was Gustav Mahler and her father, Arnold Rose, the famous concertmaster and conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. She had a fabled childhood surrounded by musicians and artists.
Alma studied violin from her father at an early age and later with Sevcik. She toured Europe as concertmistress of an all women´s orchestra she organized, and was briefly married to violin virtuoso Vasa Prihoda.
All of the fame and glamour ended however when she was captured and interned in the dreaded Auschwitz. Fearing that she was about to be eliminated she asked for her last wish to be able to play the violin. Word quickly spread that she was the Alma Rose of the Rose Quartet and before she knew it, the camp supervisor, assigned her to lead a women´s orchestra. For many of the players, the orchestra was the only chance of survival. Alma took pity on people who auditioned and tried to fit them in, whether it was as accordion player, or guitarist, or if they had no playing talent, as copyist and scribe. She took her job seriously, practicing 10-12 hours a day in addition to giving "concerts". All this was under the constant stress and threat of elimination if they did not prove their worthiness to the SS in charge.
Alma maintained a musicality, and in those moments while playing music, they were transported out of their nightmare and back to the preWar Vienna, playing in a cafe. The music also affected both SS and prisoners alike, and on the Sunday concerts, prisoners strained to hear and grasp a small slice of beauty while SS overlords sat in the front row weeping with emotion. How they could love music so much and then turn around and kill mercilessly was beyond the comprehension of the survivors.
Alma saved the lives of many women, and even though she perished, her bravery and dedication lives on in the stories of the survivors she helped.
The author Richard Newman based the book on firsthand knowledge, primary sources such as letters and interviews with survivors, relatives, friends and contemporaries. He maintained a historical accuracy and honest portrayal of Alma´s life. You will be touched while unable to grasp the enormity of the horrors that faced the people who were interned in the death camps.
I read this book alongside with "Night" by Elie Wiesel who arrived at Auschwitz shortly before Alma´s death. Both books are highly recommended although extremely sad, they show the resilience of the human spirit in absolutely horrible conditions.
¤ 3) Paperback Book Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz by Amadeus Press. Alma Rose was born to musical royalty in Vienna (the daughter of famed violinist Arnold Rose and niece of Gustav Mahler). She studied with distinction at the Vienna Conservatory and the Vienna State Academy, and consequently enjoyed a very respectable and successful musical career. In 1932 Alma formed a women´s orchestra (Vienna Waltzing Girls) and toured throughout Europe. But like so many others of her class and background, she was totally caught off guard by the Nazi onslaught. Courageously assisting her family´s flight from the Nazi´s antisemitic pogroms, she was nonetheless caught and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. There she took a group of terrified and untrained women and transformed them into an orchestra whose music saved them from being summarily gassed by their Nazi captors. Forty women were to survive that horrific place because of their participation in Alma´s prisoner orchestra. But Alma herself was to die of illness in the camps before they were able to be liberated by the Allies. A welcome contribution to Holocaust studies, as well as a brilliantly presented biography of a gifted musician, Alma Rose: Vienna To Auschwitz is a memorial to a gifted musician and a testament to Alma´s personal struggle to help as many women survive as she could. It is also a damning indictment of the Nazi horror and an effective counter to the pernicious attempts of historical revisionists to suppress both the atrocities and the courage of those dark times.¤ 4) Paperback Book Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz by Amadeus Press. Richard Newman has spent many years working on this book and it paid off, there can´t be a biography on hardly anyone that is better researched. And he has written it in a way that doesn´t judge the person, he relates the facts but doesn´t try any psychological insight. He leaves this up to the reader. A beautiful, compelling book on a woman that used a difficult position to save as many lives as possible. If ever anyone deserved a monument, it is Alma Rosé. Richard Newman`s book lays the foundation. I will publish the German version in Fall 2002.¤ 5) Paperback Book Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz by Amadeus Press. My review is best expressed in a letter to the authors. While the letter speaks little of the content of the story, it does the reflections of the reader: I have just finished your book, Alma Rosé, Vienna to Auschwitz and felt compelled to write a word of thanks for such an excellent book. I have lived in Vienna for 23 years and in our early years I walked by the Rosé house in the Pyrkergasse each day, taking our oldest to the Volkschule. Of course, at that time, I had no idea the importance of number 23. Through your book and others of Viennese history I have gained a profound sense of history that a midwest American, growing up in the suburbs, rarely has a chance to learn. We have since moved from the 19th district, but each time I am in the city the enormity of life that has gone on before me deeply tugs at my soul. The stones I walk on have carried the lives of so many, each woven into a history of joy and often of utter loss and evil. I believe your book was one of those that has allowed me to enter into a life past. Through it I have gained new perspective that the joy and beauty I now enjoy is not without the marring of tragedy and sorrow of many who were innocent. I was also able with my family to visit Auschwitz this summer. The visit has left a lasting impact on our minds and it certainly allowed me to have even deeper sense of personal presence as I read your book. The immensity of the tragedy leaves one lost for thoughts and words. The life of Alma Rosé puts a reality to that part of history that seems unbelievable, yet was played out in the very places I have lived and walked. I visited the Rosé grave in Grinzing last week and noted that Alma´s name is inscribed on the headstone (unfortunately, the date is 4/4/44 and not 5/4/44). In honor of her courage and for the lives she most certainly helped spare, I left a memorial candle on her grave. I did not seem fitting to leave the grave without some acknowledgement and sign of respect of her family´s life. Again, thank you for the fine research and excellent presentation of her life. The book must also be considered a memorial not just to one life, but to many who´s stories will never be told.¤ 6) Paperback Book Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz by Amadeus Press. Alma Rose´s tragic story, from her birth and youth in the exalted musical circles of Vienna (her father was leader of the Vienna Philharmonic, her uncle was Gustav Mahler) to her death at Auschwitz, first came to public attention through the 1980 film Playing for Time. As leader of the only women´s orchestra in the Nazi camps, by force of her will and spirit, she molded a terrified group of young musicians into an ensemble that became their sole hope of survival. And although Alma herself died of a sudden illness shortly before the liberation of the camps, she saved the lives of some four dozen members of the orchestra. In telling her full story for the first time, Richard Newman and Karen Kirtley honor her and the valiant prisoner-musicians for whom music meant life.¤ 7) Paperback Book Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz by Amadeus Press. Part family biography, part European and Holocaust history, this book traces the life of violinist Alma Rosé, along with that of other members of her illustrious musical family, from her birth in 1906 in one of the world´s foremost cultural capitals to her death in a Nazi extermination camp in 1944. It will be particularly fascinating and wrenching to anyone with similar roots. Alma was the niece of the famous composer and conductor Gustav Mahler, at the time director of the Vienna Opera, and the daughter of Arnold Rosé, concertmaster of the Opera Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic and leader of his own renowned string quartet. Her older brother Alfred became a noted pianist, conductor, composer, and teacher. Alma, named after her aunt and godmother, Alma Mahler, was taught by her father and, both inspired and intimidated by the family´s musical tradition, she became a fairly successful violinist. In 1930, she established a girls´ orchestra called the Viennese Waltz-Girls, with which she toured throughout Europe as conductor and soloist, and which surprisingly had her austere father´s blessing because of the high quality of the playing. Her marriage to the famous, dashing Czech violin virtuoso Vása Príhoda soon ended in heartbreak and divorce. Disaster struck in 1938, when Hitler annexed Austria, whose population welcomed him enthusiastically; the country´s always latent anti-Semitism erupted swiftly and violently. Though the Rosé family were completely assimilated and had even converted to Christianity, Arnold immediately lost his orchestra position and pension. His wife was ill and died that year, leaving him stranded financially and emotionally. Alfred and his wife managed to flee to Holland, England, and eventually Canada, where he died in 1975; Alma mistakenly thought she was protected by the Czech passport gained through her marriage. With dauntless determination, and with the help of old friends, including the famous violinist Carl Flesch, she got her father and herself to England only months before the outbreak of World War II. The Rosé Quartet´s cellist and former principal of the Vienna Philharmonic, Friedrich Buxbaum, had arrived there earlier; he later joined the re-formed quartet. So far, Alma´s story parallels my own. Born in Vienna 20 years later to musical parents who encouraged my violin studies, I grew up near enough the Rosé house to encounter the illustrious concertmaster not only on stage but on the streetcar. We witnessed Hitler´s triumphant arrival, but our Czech passports enabled us to escape to Czechoslovakia. When Hitler caught up with us in 1939, we, too, managed with the help of friends to get to England just before the war. A few years later, I was thrilled to be the violinist in a trio with the venerable Buxbaum, who still played with the facility and tone of a man half his age. Here the resemblance ends. While we survived the war in England and ultimately came to America, Alma was tempted by performing opportunities to leave the comparative security of England for Holland, where her career flourished and she earned enough money to help her father. She was still fulfilling engagements when the Germans overran Belgium and the Netherlands; her efforts to get back to England, or join her brother in America, failed. Staying with friends, she was almost picked up by the Nazis despite a hastily arranged marriage to an "Aryan" Dutchman, and in 1942 she went into hiding, tried to get into Switzerland, but was betrayed, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. From here on, the story takes on a surreal character. Shortly after her arrival at what has been called "a wound in the order of being," it was discovered that Alma was a violinist, and, in a grotesque replay of her past, she was asked to take over a poor, threadbare musical ensemble of women inmates. By sheer courage, fortitude, and determination, she turned this motley group into a viable orchestra, training and coaching the players; arranging music for its ill-matched instrumental makeup, from mandolins to sopranos; and driving herself and her musicians to exhaustion. Gaining unprecedented stature and exploiting some of the most brutal camp functionaries´ love of music, she saved her musicians from the gas chambers and also obtained some favors and privileges for them. Forty years later, one of them said that there is not a day when she does not remember Alma and thank her. Alma herself succumbed to an undiagnosed illness, which deepened the mystery surrounding her. Author Richard Newman made friends with Alfred Rosé and his wife in Canada in 1946. The impetus for writing this book was the publication of a memoir called Playing for Time by Fania Fénelon, a singer with Alma´s orchestra, which gives a very harsh portrayal of her. Newman´s search for the "real" Alma lasted 22 years and took him around the world. His sources are family letters, interviews, and correspondence with family, friends, and surviving members of the orchestra, lending the book an overwhelming immediacy and authenticity. Included are Mahler and Rosé family trees, many pages of photographs, a map of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and a list of the orchestra players. The section dealing with camp life (and death) is written in an unemotional, reportorial style full of facts and figures. That approach may have saved Newman´s own sanity, and, by its incongruity with the grisly content, it both blunts and heightens the impact of the indescribable, unimaginable details it recounts. This is a book to numb the mind and sear the soul. --Edith Eisler¤ Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 1-Dec-2008, 1574670859073999486223, 790-090-460-590-470-591-8 
Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz, Book, Image © Amadeus Press
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