Inherit the Truth

The Cellist of Auschwitz -- THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571402427
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Told in her own words, this is the incredible true story of one young woman's survival of Auschwitz and Belsen because she happened to play the cello.

With a new foreword by Philippe Sands.

Although my head was shaved and I had a number on my arm, I had not lost my identity totally. I may no longer have had a name, but I was identifiable . I was 'the cellist'.

When eighteen-year-old Anita arrived at Auschwitz, she found herself plucked from the Nazi death machine by a twist of fate: she played the cello, and the camp orchestra needed a cellist. Now the last living survivor of the Auschwitz Women's Orchestra, this is her story told in her own words.

Like so many German Jewish schoolgirls, Anita had been busy with her studies and ambitions when her everyday life began to turn by degrees into one of unimaginable horror. School was cancelled, her parents were summoned for deportation, and when she and her sister, Renate, attempted to escape to France, they were arrested and imprisoned. Through her sharp-etched memories, alongside family letters, photos, and other historical documents, Inherit the Truth leads us into one of humanity's darkest chapters, where we are forced to confront the fragility of the line between civilisation and barbarity.

Marking the eightieth anniversary of her arrival in the UK after her release from Belsen concentration camp, and with a new introduction by Philippe Sands, Anita's account of her and her sister's survival of both Auschwitz and Belsen is a testament to their remarkable courage, resilience, ingenuity and luck.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch's book Inherit the Truth: The Cellist of Auschwitz was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 26-04-2026

Table of contents

• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Foreword to the New Edition
• Preface by Sir Martin Gilbert
• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations
• Key to Names
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1: Pre-War Germany and the Kristallnacht
• 2: The Destruction of a Family
• 3: Alone in Breslau with Renate
• 4: Convicted Criminals
• 5: ‘Voluntary’ Transfer to Auschwitz
• 6: Music for the Inferno
• 7: From Hell to Hell: Our Miraculous Escape to Belsen
• 8: The Liberation of Belsen
• 9: Peace at Belsen: Secondment to the British Army
• 10: Marooned in Brussels
• 11: The Boat Across the Channel
• Appendix 1. Declaration of Possessions (Vermögenserklärung)
• Appendix 2. Official German Documents Relating to the Seizure of the Lasker Family’s Property in Breslau
• Appendix 3. Alma Rosé in Auschwitz by Dr Margita Schwalbovà
• Appendix 4. Transcript from the Official British Record of the Trial in Lüneburg
• Appendix 5. BBC Radio Broadcast, 16th April 1945
• Index
• Plates
• About the Author
• Copyright