[PW] holocaust orchestra clarification

[Campbell, Barbara A]

We just acquired a new Children's/YA book by Michael Morpurgo (Ill.
Michael Foreman) entitled "The Mozart Question."   In general it is
getting rave reviews but Publishers Weekly calls into question a flaw.
The story is about the orchestras made up of Concentration Camp victims
who were forced to play Mozart's music while others were being led to
the gas chambers.  The story tells that the boy's parents met while
playing in such an orchestra in a concentration camp.  According to the
review in Feb, 2008 Publisher's Weekly, "The story's foundation,
unfortunately, is flawed: men and women prisoners did not mix in
concentration camps, and orchestras were not exceptions. Why ask readers
to honor history (much less a history that undergoes very public
challenges) if the author reinvents the record?  

 

Can anyone either verify or negate this claim that concentration camp
orchestra's were never coed, and that this could or couldn't have
happened?

 

Thanks much, Barb

barbara-campbell at uiowa.edu