Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz.(Review)

Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz. By Richard Newman with Karen Kirtley. Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 2000. [407 p. ISBN 1-57467-051-4. $29.95.]

Richard Newman's account of the life of Alma Rose takes the reader on a journey from the musical and cultural world of fin de siecle Vienna to the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps. In his well-written anti thoroughly researched book, Newman provides a dramatic and intimate look at Rose's life, her environment, and the precarious times in which she lived.

Alma Rose was born in 1906 to Justine Mahler (Gustav Mahler's younger sister) and Arnold Rose, the revered Viennese violinist who served as the concertmaster of the Vienna Opera and Vienna Philharmonic and as leader of the Rose Quartet. Music was an integral part of the Rose household, and Alma developed into a skilled violinist. Professionally, she struggled to emerge from her father's shadow and establish herself as a soloist in the 1920s. In 1932, she founded the Wiener Walzermadeln (Vienna Waltzing Girls), forging a highly successful career as the group's dedicated leader. This ensemble, which toured extensively in Europe, created a unique niche in the musical world and made a name for the young violinist.

Following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Rose and her father escaped persecution by fleeing to England. In 1939, to support her beloved father, she went to the Netherlands to work. Unable to leave Holland after the German occupation in May 1940, she attempted unsuccessfully to escape through France and was deported to Auschwitz in July 1943. She saved many young women from the gas chambers through her leadership of the all-women's orchestra in Birkenau. (This portion of her life was told in the 1980 television film Playing for Time.) Succumbing to a sudden illness, she died in April 1944.

Newman reveals that Rose was a deeply complex individual who was always anchored and driven by her love of music and her family. Through his extensive interviews with friends and acquaintances and his access to the family papers--the book includes a number of family photographs--the author has provided a very personal, often intimate, account of Rose's life. He chronicles her career as well as her disappointments in love and marriage and considers how those experiences may have shaped her. While clearly sympathetic to his subject, Newman is not afraid to show the darker side of her character, including her sometimes spoiled behavior even while in hiding from the Nazis. Conversely, he also details her strong will and ingenuity, evident while she endured the restrictive life for Jews in occupied Holland and forged her unusual position in Auschwitz. The portrait of Rose develops slowly, because Newman chooses to spend several chapters recounting the careers and family history of the Roses and Mahlers. While thi s creates a valuable historical and personal context, Alma herself does not come into sharp focus until midway through the book. Newman contributes to this problem by returning periodically to the lives of ...