Berlin: Esther Bejarano, who survived the Auschwitz death camp who used the power of music to fight antisemitism and racism in Germany, had died.
He was 96.
Bejarano died peacefully in peace on Saturdays at Jewish hospitals in Hamburg, the DPA German news agency quoted Helga Obens, a member of the Auschwitz Committee Board in Germany, said.
The cause of death is not given.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas gave awards to Bejarano, calling it “an important voice in the war against racism and antisemitism.” Born in 1924 as the daughter of Jewish Cantor Rudolf Loewy in what was then Saarlouis who was occupied by France, the family then moved to Saarbruecken, where Bejarano enjoyed the parenting of music and was protected until the Nazis in power and the city was returned to Germany in 1935.
His parents and brothers Ruth finally were deported and killed, while Bejarano had to do forced labor before being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943.
There, he volunteered to become a member of the girl orchestra, playing accordion every time.
Jews from all over Europe arrived.
Bejarano will say later that music helped keep him alive in the famous German Nazi death camp in Poland and for years after the Holocaust.
“We played with tears in our eyes,” Remember in the 2010 interview with the Associated Press.
“Newcomers come waving and clapping, but we know they will be taken directly to the gas room.” Because his grandmother was a Christian, Bejarano was then transferred to the Ravensbrueck concentration camp and survived death at the end of the war.
In memoir, Bejarano remembered the rescue by US forces who gave him the accordion, which he played the day of the army and the American concentration camp danced around the burner Adolf Hitler’s portrait to celebrate the allied victory over the Nazis.
Bejarano emigrated to Israel after war and married Nissim Berjarano.
The couple had two children, Edna and Joram, before returning to Germany in 1960.
After once again finding open antisemitism, Bejarano decided to be politically active, establishing the Auschwitz Committee in 1986 to give platform survivors to their stories.
He worked with his children to play Yiddish melodies and Jewish resistance songs in the Hamburg-based band they called by coincidence, and also with the microphone mafia hip-hop group to spread the anti-racism message to Germany.
“We all like music and share common goals: we fight against racism and discrimination,” he told the collaboration in all cultures and generations.
Bejarano received many awards, including the order of German merit, for activism against what he called “old and new Nazis,” citing fellow Holocaust savings, Primo Levi’s warning that “it happened, because it could happen again.” While addressing young people in Germany and so on, Bejarano will say, “You are not guilty of what happened at that time.
But you become guilty if you refuse to listen to what happened.”