A Time Of Miracles

by Wendy Holden

‘AS long as I have music, then it is proof that beauty still exists in this world.’ So spoke sixteen-year-old piano prodigy Zuzana Růžičková in 1943 on the eve of being transported from the ghetto where most of her family had died to the even more unimaginable horrors of Auschwitz II-Birkenau and on, via cruel slave labour, to Bergen-Belsen.

This week (May 14) sees the paperback publication of her memoir One Hundred Miracles, released in a time of unimaginable uncertainty for this generation facing an unseen enemy for the first time in their lifetimes. Its release comes just two weeks after the issue of another of my paperbacks, a special edition of my international bestseller Born Survivors brought out to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and the 75th birthdays of the three miracle babies who were born in the concentration camp system. 

What should have been a double celebration of this momentous milestone in a writing career spanning four decades has turned into something of a nightmare as the coronavirus pandemic has closed bookshops and massively disrupted distribution, marketing and sales. Yet, even in the face of what may seem like a publishing disaster, I remain inspired by the women I’ve been privileged to write about. Both memoirs feature beautiful young women with everything to look forward to but who suddenly found themselves living in daily fear of their lives, having lost everyone they ever loved. It is these singular individuals I look to now and whose experiences have marked me for life. Writing about them so immersively, I feel that I came to know them well and only hope that some of their courage, wisdom and resilience has rubbed off on me.

For Zuzana, it was music that had sustained her through a peaceful and melodic childhood in Czechoslovakia that had been marred only by life-threatening illnesses. The works of Johann Sebastian Bach especially moved her, and became her second great love after her doting parents. It was his English Suite No 5 In E Minor that Zuzana played for the last time with the piano teacher who’d inspired her, shortly before the Nazis sent her and her family to the hell of a ghetto. 

Having lost her beloved father and grandparents to illness and neglect in the ghetto, she and her mother were told they would be transported Auschwitz. The night before they were crammed into cattle cars, she copied out her favourite section of the English Suite and slipped it into her pocket as a ‘talisman.’ In the chaos of arriving at the notorious concentration camp, her precious snippet of hope flew from her fingers and spun away from her in a blizzard. Her mother, who’d been forcibly separated from her only child, heard Zuzana’s wail of distress, broke free from her guards and ran to grab the scrap and hand it back to her in what she thought would be her final, parting gift. This gesture saved her life, as the women with Zuzana pulled her onto their departing truck, thus rescuing her from the bullets and the gas chambers.

It was one of at least a hundred miracles that saved Zuzana and her mother from being murdered. They somehow survived not only Auschwitz but also brutal slave labour under constant bombardment – where Zuzana’s delicate pianist hands sustained crippling injuries – before finally ending up in what she described as the ‘worst hell of all: Bergen-Belsen.’ It was there that her fierce bravery and passion for life kept her going in the most unspeakable circumstances.

 When the war finally ended she and her mother were as close to death as they had ever been –each weighing four stone. Yet the war was far from over for them. When they were finally well enough to return to their hometown they discovered that they were homeless and destitute. Former acquaintances were living in their apartment and even wearing their clothes. When Zuzana was told that she would never play professionally again, she took an overdose.

Her mother found her just in time and she was ultimately saved once more by the music of Bach, switching to the harpsichord on which he’d composed most of his music and winning a coveted place in the Academy of Music. With the love and encouragement of her mother and a husband who sacrificed so much to marry a Jew, Zuzana became one of the twentieth century’s most renowned musicians and the first person on the planet to record the entire keyboard works of Bach. 

Her talent should have made her a wealthy woman but when a Stalinist regime took over her country she endured a further four decades of anti-Semitism, persecution, poverty and fear. To prevent her from defecting the authorities held her mother and husband hostage whilst accepting a gruelling schedule of engagements on her behalf, pushing her out into the world in order to pocket eighty per cent of her earnings. It was only the fall of Communism in 1989 that finally released Zuzana from enslavement at the age of sixty-two. 

Spending time with Zuzana in Prague in 2017 was a surprisingly joyful experience for me, and not at all what I’d expected of someone who’d survived three concentration camps, the loss of most of her family and her own near death. Yet the 90-year-old Czech musician’s eyes twinkled with mischief and she never once flinched from my questions.

My interviews were conducted in her old-fashioned top floor apartment in a suburb of the city. Although she was tired and had been unwell, she was determined to answer all my questions. As we came to the end of our time together, she clasped my hand and kissed me goodbye with tears in her eyes. It came as a huge shock when she died one week later. Her memoir has become her enduring legacy along with her music – a profound and powerful testimony of the horrors of the Holocaust as well as a joyful celebration of art and resistance. 

 Similarly, with my research into the stories featured in Born Survivors, now published in 22 countries and translated into sixteen languages, I came across three incredible women who each arrived in Auschwitz two months pregnant by their beloved husbands and, having been stripped and shaved, were paraded naked before Dr Josef Mengele, the ‘Angel of Death.’ With a crooked smile, he asked each of them, “Are you pregnant, pretty lady?”

None knew whether by denying that they were they’d be condemning themselves and the lives of their unborn babies, but they knew instinctively that they were in the presence of danger. Astonishingly, they survived the next seven months of their pregnancies in slave labour, living on a diet of largely water and never certain that they’d see the following day. It was because of many more miracles and thanks to the kindness and courage of strangers that all three mothers and their babies survived, arriving at the concentration camp where they were destined to be murdered just twenty-four hours after the gas ran out.

If a young piano prodigy with broken hands can go on to become one of the world’s foremost musicians and if three pregnant women can defy the Nazis and give birth in the camps, then who am I to complain about anything? The stories of these women are timeless. They will not disappear and their remarkable lives that are waiting to inspire future readers. As I embark on virtual launches, blog tours, podcasts and whatever I can to tell the world about them, I am confident that the light these courageous women shine on our troubled world will not go unnoticed.

One Hundred Miracles: Music, Auschwitz, Survival and Love

by Zuzana Ružičková with Wendy Holden. Bloomsbury £9.99

•  “An extraordinary memoir … A moving record of a life well lived in the face of appalling obstacles” – Sunday Times
•  “A compelling story of terrible suffering surmounted by incredible bravery” – Daily Telegraph
•  “Zuzana’s humanity shines through all the inhumanity …Vivid and moving” – The Jewish Chronicle
•  “Through Auschwitz and the brutalities of the early Soviet era, the music of Bach shines like a beacon of hope” – Financial Times, Books of the Year 

Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance and Survival by Wendy Holden

Sphere £8.99 (special WWII 75th anniversary edition with a conversation with miracle ‘baby’ Eva Clarke added to the audiobook)

• “An exceptionally fresh history, a work of prodigious original research, written with zealous empathy.” New York Times

• “A work of quite extraordinary investigative dedication. Born Survivors is a moving testament of faith.” Sir Harold Evans

• “A sensitive, brave, disturbing book that everyone should read.” Rabbi Baroness Neuberger DBE

•  “Packed with harrowing detail and impressively well researched…. intense, powerful and moving… a worthy testament to these three women and the miraculous survival of the children.” Jewish Chronicle

Also available at Waterstones and all good booksellers

—

Because of the lockdown, Wendy Holden has moved her creative writing courses online and the next one is June 9. See www.wendyholden.com or strangemediagroup/courses for more information 

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing