Inherit the Truth: The Cellist of Auschwitz

**THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER**

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.

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 Through her sharp-etched memories, alongside family letters, photos, and other historical documents, Inherit the Truth leads us into one of humanity's darkest chapters, where we are forced to confront the fragility of the line between civilisation and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, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch'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.

This edition includes a new foreword from Philippe Sands, author of 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England, and a Nazi in Patagonia.

Author: Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 08/25/2026
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 7.70h x 5.00w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780571402410


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2026

About the Author
Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita: - Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was brought up in Breslau, Silesia, the daughter of a distinguished lawyer, Alfons Lasker, whose brother Edward became a U.S. chess champion. At the age of thirteen she studied the cello with Leo Rostal in Berlin, until the Kristallnacht (1938) forced her to return home. After surviving the war, she emigrated to England; in 1949 she became a founder member of the English Chamber Orchestra. She married the pianist Peter Wallfisch, and has two children, Maya and Raphael, who is also a celebrated cellist.Sands, Philippe: - Philippe Sands is Professor of Law at UCL and a barrister and arbitrator at 11 KBW. He is the author of numerous books, including East West Street, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize and, most recently, The Last Colony and 38 Londres Street.