Fania Fénelon (née Fanja Goldstein; 2 September 1908 – 19 December 1983) was a French pianist, composer and cabaret singer whose 1976 memoir, ''Sursis pour l'orchestre'', about survival in the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz during

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

was adapted as the 1980 television film, '' Playing for Time''.

Biography

Fanja Goldstein was born in Paris in 1908 to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. Her father, Jules Goldstein, was an engineer in the rubber industry. She had two brothers, Leonide and Michel Goldstein, both of whom also survived the war. Her marriage to Silvio Perla (a Swiss athlete, specialist in the 5000-metre run) ended in divorce, which was finalized after the war.

Schooling

She attended the

Conservatoire de Paris The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...

, where she studied under

Germaine Martinelli Germaine Martinelli, ''née'' Germaine Jeanne Jobert, (30 September 1887 in the 9th arrondissement of Paris – 8 April 1964 at her home in the 1st arrondissement of Paris), was a 20th-century French opera singer. Biography Daughter of Doctor ...

, obtaining a first prize in piano (despite her diminutive size and very small hands) and at the same time worked nights, singing in bars.

War and After

During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, she joined the

French Resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

in 1940 until her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was a pianist and soprano in the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, then to

Bergen-Belsen Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentrati ...

, until she was freed in 1945. Suffering from a potentially fatal case of

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...

and weighing only 65 pounds, she sang for the BBC on the day of her liberation by British troops. (A

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

entry for this recording gives her name as Fanja Perla, her married name at the time; her divorce from Perla was finalized after the war.) Under her pseudonym of "Fénelon", which she took up after the war, Goldstein became a well known cabaret singer. In 1966 she went with her African-American life-partner, baritone singer Aubrey Pankey, to East Berlin. After Pankey's death she returned to France. From 1973 to 1975, with Marcelle Routier, she wrote ''Sursis pour l'orchestre'', a book about her experiences, based on the diary she kept at the concentration camps. It dealt with the degrading compromises survivors had to make, the black humor of inmates who would sometimes laugh hysterically over gruesome sights, the religious and national tensions among inmates (e.g. between the Jewish musicians and the

Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in C ...

, some of whom were anti-Semitic), and the normality of prostitution and lesbian relationships. At Birkenau, Fénelon served as a pianist, one of the two main singers, an occasional arranger of musical pieces, and even a temporary drummer, when the original drummer briefly took ill.Profile
Jta.org; accessed 16 November 2014. All of the orchestra members survived the war, except two players, Lola Kroner and Julie Stroumsa, and conductor Alma Rosé who died of a sudden illness, possibly food poisoning, at the camp. Most of the other survivors, particularly

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch Anita Lasker-Wallfisch (born 17 July 1925) is a German-British cellist, and a surviving member of the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz. Family Lasker was born into a German Jewish family in Wrocław, Breslau, then Germany (present-day Wrocław, P ...

and Violette Jacquet-Silberstein, disagreed with Fénelon's negative portrayal of Rosé, who, although Jewish, had been given the equivalent status of a

kapo A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks. Also called "prisoner self-administrat ...

. The book was translated into German and English in slightly abridged editions.

In Popular Culture

Linda Yellen Linda Yellen is an American director, producer and writer of film and television, (born in New York City). As a producer some of her credits are '' Playing for Time'' (1980), ''The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana'' (1982) and ''Second Serve' ...

filmed '' Playing for Time'' using as script a dramatic adaptation by

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are ''All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...

. Fénelon bitterly opposed Miller's and Yellen's purportedly sanitized rendition of life in the camps and above all Yellen's casting of

Vanessa Redgrave Dame Vanessa Redgrave (born 30 January 1937) is an English actress and activist. Throughout her career spanning over seven decades, Redgrave has garnered numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Television Award, tw ...

to play her. Redgrave was a well-known PLO sympathizer and, standing close to six feet tall, bore little resemblance to the petite Fania. "I do not accept a person to play me who is the opposite of me ... I wanted Liza Minnelli. She's small, she's full of life, she sings and dances. Vanessa ... doesn't have a sense of humor, and that is the one thing that saved me from death in the camp", Fénelon said. She scolded Redgrave in person during a '' 60 Minutes'' interview but the actress garnered the support of the acting community. Fénelon never forgave Redgrave, but eventually softened her view of the production to concede that it was "a fair film".

Death

Fania Fénelon died on 19 December 1983, aged 75, in a Paris hospital. The causes of death were listed as cancer and heart disease. She was survived by her brothers, Leonide Goldstein, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and Michel Goldstein, a retired businessman in Paris.

Works

Translations

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