Violette Silberstein: Born on November 9, 1925, in Petroseni (Romania) into a Hungarian Jewish family, Violette Silberstein was deported at the beginning of 1943 to Auschwitz with her parents, whom she would never see again. She escaped extermination after being recruited as a violinist in the women’s orchestra of the extermination camp. This orchestra, made up of around forty women, played every day during the departure and return of Jews assigned to work kommandos, and on Sunday afternoons for the camp’s SS officers.
Evacuated from the camp in October 1944 to the Bergen-Belsen camp, she was liberated by the British on April 15, 1945.
After the war, Violette Jacquet-Silberstein sang in Parisian cabarets, then in Toulon. In 2005, she published Les sanglots longs des violons de la mort (Oskar Editions), an autobiographical account for children. She was also the central figure of a play, Vis au long de la vie, adapted from this account. The play was performed in Avignon in 2008 and in Paris in 2009. The former deportee regularly gave testimony about her life in Auschwitz.
Violette Jacquet-Silberstein, who had been living since March 2009 at the National Institution of the Invalides, was a Knight of the Legion of Honour.
