How can there be music in the worst place in the world? Learn about it in this "The Last Musician of Auschwitz" Curriculum and Class Materials.
The moving documentary, The Last Musician of Auschwitz, tells the stories of Auschwitz prisoners who played and created music in the notorious death camp. Among them is the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who at age 100, is the last remaining member of the Auschwitz prisoner orchestra.
The film shows how, in the most brutal and dehumanizing situations, music could offer a lifeline, a method of giving testimony, and even a way to resist. Woven throughout the film are new interpretations of musical works written by victims of the camp, mainly filmed at evocative locations in the environs of Auschwitz.
On this website, teachers will find lesson plans, film excerpts and additional teaching materials for classroom use. The film offers a unique opportunity to bring the lessons of the Holocaust to New York City secondary school students as it frames its message through the universally accessible language of music.
The materials are intended for use by students in grades 8 to 12. The lesson plans can be used to teach the following subjects:
Click here to go directly to the lesson plans.
Click here to go directly to movie excerpts prepared for classroom use.
Starting October, you will be able to watch the whole documentary for free via BBC Select to prepare your classes. For classroom use, we have pre-selected clips that come with lesson plans.
This project has been made possible with generous support of the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
The Center for Jewish History (CJH) in New York City is the largest and most comprehensive archive of the modern Jewish experience outside of Israel. The CJH illuminates history, culture, and heritage and provides a collaborative home for five partner organizations: American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The partners’ archives span more than three thousand years, with more than seven linear miles of archival documents (in dozens of languages and alphabet systems), more than 500,000 volumes, as well as thousands of artworks, textiles, ritual objects, recordings, films, and photographs. The Center’s experts are leaders in unlocking archival material for a wide audience through the latest practices in digitization, library science, and public education. This education project was supported by the CJH Institute for Advanced Research.
The curriculum has been prepared by Lilly Maier, a Holocaust historian based in Munich, Germany. In 2018, she published the book, Arthur and Lilly. The Girl and the Holocaust Survivor, the biography of a Holocaust survivor who – as a boy in the 1930s – lived in the same Viennese apartment that she grew up in. (The book appeared English in 2023.) In 2021, Maier published, “Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder!,” the biography of Austrian educator, Ernst Papanek, who rescued hundreds of children during World War II. More recently, she finished the “John Werner Friedmann Source Collection and Study Guide” for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The 12-chapter study guide about the rescue of the Holocaust survivor, John Werner Friedmann, is available in German and English. Maier is currently working on her PhD dissertation about Jewish female rescuers during the Shoah.
Maier regularly gives talks and workshops in schools all over Germany, Austria and the US. For more information, visit lillymaier.wordpress.com.
Toby Trackman is the director of The Last Musician of Auschwitz. Based in London, he has been making documentaries for over 20 years, winning a prestigious Grierson award for his film Stabbed which unflinchingly explored the lasting trauma caused by knife crime. He was nominated for a BAFTA award for his first film, The Boy with the Incredible Brain, which visualised the world of Daniel Tammett, a synesthete who sees numbers as shapes and landscapes. Drawn to stories that reveal profound human experiences, Toby’s work has taken him all the world, collaborating with a diverse range of people, from Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, A-list superstars and world leading scientists to ordinary families facing extraordinary situations. Since finishing The Last Musician of Auschwitz, Toby has become a Trustee of the Grierson Trust, a leading organisation promoting inclusivity, training and truthfulness in the world of documentaries and is currently working on a new film with a world-famous musical icon.
Alan Clements founded Two Rivers Media in 2019, quickly establishing it as a major Scottish production company. In its first years, it delivered documentaries such as Frankie Boyle’s Tour of Scotland and The Trial of Alex Salmond for BBC2, as well as its first drama, Susan Hill’s Ghost Story – The Small Hand for Channel 5. Other BBC Scotland projects included This Is Our Story and The Women That Changed Modern Scotland. Alan executive-produced Killing Escobar, the BAFTA-winning film about a Scottish mercenary’s 1989 mission against Pablo Escobar, which became a top ten hit on iPlayer and Netflix. Since then, Two Rivers has produced Cassius X: Becoming Ali, War and Justice: The Case of Marine A, Confessions of a Teenage Fraudster, Dogs of War, Barbie Uncovered, and Gemma and Gorka: Life Behind the Lens. Recent highlights include The Last Musician of Auschwitz for BBC Arts and Lockerbie: Our Story for BBC One.
Access Entertainment: The Last Musician of Auschwitz was co-funded by Access Entertainment, and executive produced by the Blavatnik Family Foundation Co-Chairs, Emily Blavatnik and Danny Cohen of Access Entertainment, that also produced The Zone of Interest.
Emily Blavatnik is Co-Chair of the Blavatnik Family Foundation. A lifelong patron of the arts, she dedicates her philanthropy to world-class cultural institutions, as well as charities that care for underprivileged and underserved children. Born and raised in New York, Emily received her BA in Art History from New York University. A longtime benefactor of the New York City Ballet, Emily also supports Alvin Ailey, American Ballet Theatre, and Carnegie Hall. She sponsors causes that benefit underserved families, in particular through the Ronald McDonald House and the Fresh Air Fund. She supports women’s health and reproductive rights through major gifts to Mt. Sinai Women’s Health Center and Planned Parenthood, among others. Emily is an Executive Producer of the documentary The Last Musician of Auschwitz and the film was made possible by her support.
Danny Cohen is the President of Access Entertainment, a division of Sir Leonard Blavatnik's Access Industries. Danny invests in a wide range of entertainment: feature films, television, live theatre, the creator economy, the visual arts and gaming. He is an Executive Producer on a slate of over twenty films, including the double-Oscar winning The Zone of Interest, the Oscar and Bafta-winning Conclave and The Iron Claw. He is also a co-producer of the hit Broadway show The Picture of Dorian Gray starring Sarah Snook. Before joining Access Entertainment, Danny was the Director of BBC Television where he had responsibility for all of the BBC's network channels and the greenlighting and production of the BBC's drama, entertainment, comedy, arts, history, science, educational content and documentary.
Access Entertainment’s corporate investments include the film and television studio A24, Tripledot Studios (Europe’s fastest-growing company in 2023); creator economy leader Spotter; Theatre Royal Haymarket, one of the oldest London theatres still in use; and Lightroom, an immersive entertainment space which opened with shows in collaboration with David Hockney and Tom Hanks.
Cinematography: In all his films, Toby Trackman looks for creative and cinematic ways to sympathetically tell peoples stories. In The Last Musician of Auschwitz, this was done partly by using a set of vintage pre-war lenses for the musical performances in the film. The lenses were engineered by Lore Sternfeld, a German Jewish woman, who made them under Nazi house arrest in Berlin. Once she completed the lenses, she was sent to Auschwitz to be murdered there. The company she worked for, Astro-Berliner, wrote to the Nazis to demand the return of the lenses, but over the years they fell into disrepair and were restored in 2024. The Last Musician of Auschwitz was the first time the lenses had been used in decades and filming the performances at the camp, with lenses made by a woman who was murdered there, added an extra layer of poignancy to the film.