The New Yorker:

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is nearly a hundred and has forgotten nothing. In “The Commandant’s Shadow,” she meets the descendants of Rudolf Höss.

By Alex Ross

ier spricht Anita Lasker, eine deutsche Jüdin,” a voice says, youthful but precise. “This is Anita Lasker speaking, a German Jew.” The recording was made on April 16, 1945, at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, one day after British troops liberated the site. The BBC was eliciting statements from various former inmates. Lasker, then nineteen, described how she had first been imprisoned on political grounds, then sent to Auschwitz, and finally consigned to Belsen.

“I would like to say a few words about Auschwitz,” Lasker goes on. “The Auschwitz prisoners, the few who survived, all fear that the world will not believe what happened there.” She proceeds to convey some of what had happened—scenes that were not yet familiar to a global audience. “A doctor and a commandant stood on the platform as the transports arrived, and before our eyes people were ‘sorted.’ This means, they were asked their age and state of health. . . .  Right, left, right, left. Right is toward life; left is toward the chimney.” Lasker was a cellist in the Auschwitz women’s orchestra, and she played music amid the horror. A few times, she falters as she delivers her account, but she is matter-of-fact to the end.

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