BERLIN: Esther Bejarano, one of the last survivors of the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz, has died at the age of 96, the head of the Anne Frank Education Centre said on Twitter on Saturday.
Bejarano, who played the accordion in the Auschwitz orchestra, died in the night from Friday to Saturday, Meron Mendel, head of the Frankfurt-based organisation, said.
“Esther Bejarano survived Auschwitz because she played accordion in the camp’s orchestra. She dedicated her life to music and to the fight against racism and anti-Semitism,” he wrote.
“An important voice in the fight against racism and anti-Semitism has left us,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted. Paying tribute to her “vitality and incredible story, we’ll miss her voice,” Maas wrote. Born in Sarrelouis in 1924, Bejarano was deported to the Nazi extermination camp in April 1943, before being transferred to another camp in Ravensbrueck in November of that same year.
Her parents and her sister were murdered by the Nazis. After World War II, Bejarano went to Palestine and lived in Israel for nearly 15 years before returning to Germany, where in recent years she was warned about the rise of the far-right.
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