Esther Bejarano - The legacy of the admonisher against anti-Semitism

Esther Bejarano survived the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Nazi era - and became a warning against anti-Semitism. On July 10, 2021, the 96-year-old Holocaust survivor died in her adopted home of Hamburg after a short, serious illness. A portrait.

by Oliver Diedrich, NDR.de

"As cheeky as Oskar," her father called her when Esther Bejarano was a small child. Even when she was old, she still didn't want to be "good":when a trial against a former concentration camp guard was taking place in Hamburg, where she lived, she would sit in the courtroom and call the trial "a farce" and "terrible". When refugees were harassed in her city, she publicly complained that it was "a disgrace to the city." And when neo-Nazis marched somewhere, she sang loudly with rappers against racism and anti-Semitism.

Bejarano's commitment against forgetting

Bejarano intervened because she knew from experience that too many people prefer to look the other way. She survived Auschwitz as a young woman. After that she went to Palestine. Bejarano returned to Germany in the 1960s. At that time, she quickly realized that right-wing extremism had also survived. For decades, Bejarano was committed to not forgetting Auschwitz. She was an award-winning peace activist and received the Grand Cross of Merit.

"You're about to experience worse"

Bejarano was born Esther Loewy in Saarland. Her father Rudolf Loewy was the cantor of a Jewish community. Esther was the youngest of four siblings. In her book "Memoirs" she described her carefree childhood in a musical family. But when Esther was ten years old, her world changed:"Anti-Semitism spread." She and her siblings, all Jewish children, were suddenly no longer allowed to go to "Aryan" schools. Bejarano told how the repressions increased at that time. How friends and family members fled abroad from the increasingly wild Nazi "racial politics".

Esther was eventually sent by her parents to a preparatory camp for emigration to Palestine. But there was no more emigration. In 1941 the Nazis put her and other people willing to emigrate in forced labor camps. In a confrontation with police officers, 16-year-old Esther burst into tears. "Don't be like that, you're going to experience worse," she was told.

In the cattle car to Auschwitz

On April 20, 1943, Esther got out of a cattle car in Auschwitz. In her book she recalled how upon arrival all the sick, mothers with small children, pregnant women and the elderly were singled out. "They drove to the gas chambers, which we didn't know at the time." The other prisoners had to undress in front of the SS men and have their hair shaved naked. Then they got a number tattooed on their arm. "I got 41948. Names were abolished, we were just numbers." She and her fellow prisoners slept on boards, without straw and without blankets. They received little food and had to carry stones. "They were so heavy that some women collapsed." SS guards beat the weakened. Esther was petite, only 1.48 meters tall. "I think if I hadn't had the good fortune to get out of that column, I would have perished miserably."

Esther needs to play the music to die for

But Esther was lucky. She was asked to join the camp orchestra. We are looking for an accordion player. Although she didn't master the instrument at all, she agreed. She managed to hit the right notes. This was her salvation. Although the rations for the members of the orchestra were just as meager as for everyone else, they were spared the hard, deadly work in the Auschwitz satellite camps. "Every day we saw emaciated corpses lying on the streets. We saw dead women hanging from barbed wire. Women who, out of desperation, ran to the loaded fence to end their lives." The orchestra played when the others marched off to work. Bejarano also told how they had to stand at the gate and make music when new victims were brought in for the gas chambers. "When people heard the music, they probably thought, where music is playing, it can't be that bad."

The accordion is the rescue

Esther fell ill with typhus. She was taken to the hospital with a high fever. Like all Jewish prisoners, she received no medication. She was dying. But apparently she saved her importance for the orchestra:an important SS man made sure that Esther received medicine and was nursed back to health. Their advocate was Otto Moll, who was in charge of the gas chambers and crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Ironically, the dreaded sadist Moll felt responsible for the music in the camp. A man who let his dogs maul prisoners and burned children alive.

After a few weeks Esther played in the orchestra again when other prisoners were taken away to die. When a better accordionist appeared, she took over the recorder. But then she got whooping cough and could no longer play for the time being. Moll made sure that she didn't have to take part in rehearsals for a while. "I don't know what made him do it."

Enough "Aryan blood" to be allowed to live?

"I've been very lucky in my life, very lucky, incredibly lucky," said Bejarano decades later. One morning the prisoners who had "Aryan blood in their veins" were asked to report. They should be relocated. Esther had a Christian grandmother. It was difficult for her to leave her fellow inmates, but:"My friends felt it was my duty to try to get out so I could tell what terrible crimes were being committed against us." Esther was taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Brandenburg along with 70 other women. There she had to work for the Siemens works. When the Soviet troops approached in April 1945, the Nazis forced the inmates on a "death march" to Malchow in Mecklenburg. Esther survived. In the turmoil of the last days of the war she was able to escape. She was rescued by US soldiers. They even gave her an accordion. In her memoirs, Bejarano described how the victors set fire to a large portrait of Adolf Hitler in a marketplace. "The soldiers and the girls from the concentration camp danced around the picture and I played the accordion."

Return to Germany after 15 years in Israel

It was only after the war that Esther found out that her parents and sister Ruth had been murdered. She spent the next 15 years in Israel, training as a singer. She married Nissim Bejarano and had two children. Her husband was a communist - he found it increasingly difficult to cope with the political situation. And Esther couldn't bear the heat in Israel. In 1960 they decided to leave the country. Despite many doubts, they decided to go to Germany. They moved to Hamburg because they heard from friends that the city was beautiful and the people friendly. They opened a small laundry. Nissim also worked in a chicken grill on the Reeperbahn, later he opened a nightclub in Uetersen. But they had to close the club there again, according to Bejarano, they were driven out by anti-Semitic residents. Things improved back in Hamburg. Esther opened a boutique, her husband became a precision mechanic, her son an insurance salesman, her daughter a singer.

The past is catching up

Her past caught up with her in the 1970s. Bejarano explained how members of the right-wing extremist NPD set up an information stand near her shop. She had to watch the police use violence against people who were protesting against the neo-Nazis.

I saw how neo-Nazis distributed their leaflets, how they hit opponents. I saw how the police then arrested the anti-fascists. That was too much for me. The policemen protected the Nazis. I told them I had been in a concentration camp and I couldn't understand why they were protecting the Nazis. Then one of the police officers said that there were also concentration camps in Russia and that I should also go home, otherwise I would still have a heart attack. Memoirs of the Auschwitz survivors Esther Bejarano 30 years after Auschwitz

"Now I knew I had to start doing anti-fascist work," she said in retrospect.

Bejarano's engagement against the right

Esther Bejarano was then at hundreds of events against right-wing extremism. Together with other authors, she wrote two books about her life. She told schools about her time in Auschwitz.

She protested against neo-Nazis at demos. She took over the chair of the German Auschwitz Committee. She spoke up for refugees and sang with the band Microphone Mafia at concerts against the right. She got involved wherever she felt it necessary:​​Shortly before her 95th birthday, for example, she wrote an open letter to Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) after the Association of People Persecuted by the Nazi Regime (VVN-BdA) on suspicion of Left-wing extremism the non-profit status was revoked. "The house is on fire - and you're locking out the fire brigade!" Bejarano complained. She was honorary chairwoman of the VVN-BdA.

Last year, on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, she campaigned in a petition to make May 8th a national holiday.

Although Bejarano lived here, Germany never became her home again:"Because there are still too many Nazis walking around here who remind me of the past."

Acknowledgment by the Federal President

After the death of the 96-year-old on July 10, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) condoled her two children. "With her, we are losing a courageous personality who stood up for those persecuted by the Nazi regime to the end," he wrote. It was an inner obligation of the deceased to keep alive the memory of the atrocities of the Nazi regime. Steinmeier also recalled Bejarano's performances as a singer. "Anyone who has ever experienced her in her musical element will always remember:she was so rousing!"

Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) wrote on Twitter:"Tonight we lost an important voice in the fight against racism and anti-Semitism."

Last rest in the Ohlsdorf Jewish Cemetery

On July 18, Esther Bejarano was buried in the Ohlsdorf Jewish Cemetery. Hundreds of mourners came to the cemetery and followed the mourners broadcast outside on video screens. "We will pay tribute to her memory and will work to spread her message," said Hamburg's Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) when saying goodbye to the woman who, despite great personal suffering, has fought against racism and anti-Semitism all her life.