Holocaust Survivor Alex Rosner: His Accordion Saved His Life
January 1st 2021
Rita Davidson Barnea, Editor Accordion USA News


A father’s love, a violinist and an accordion …
Alex Rosner’s red accordion sat in a plastic bag in his basement for decades. A female Nazi guard gave him the accordion when he was at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. “He’s representing all those who didn’t survive through his story, through his accordion,” said Steven Markowitz, his friend and the center’s chairman. “It brings the reality of the Holocaust to life.” The facility currently has an exhibit of items donated by survivors, their families and others. The objects include a soft leather shoe left by a child at Auschwitz; a beer stein decorated with anti-Semitic caricatures; and a lightbulb, all that remains of a synagogue in Greece. “It’s only by bringing these stories to light, by telling the stories and using actual artifacts from that time, to prove that it happened,” Markowitz said.In about 1940, Nazis took Rosner, then 5, from his home in Poland, along with his parents, Henry and Marianne, all Jews. They first lived in a crowded ghetto in Krakow and then the Plaszow concentration camp outside of the city.
When Rosner and his father were deported to Auschwitz, someone recognized Rosner’s father and asked him if he played. When he said he played the accordion, someone brought one from the warehouse of confiscated goods so that he could accompany his father. While his own musical abilities were part of how he survived, Rosner readily admits that far more important was his father, who when asked to perform for the commandant, said he would perform only if his son would be saved.”In Auschwitz concentration camp, a female guard having heard my father play the violin, she asked if I play any instruments, and I said, ‘Yes, an accordion,’” Rosner told WCBS 880’s Sean Adams. “So about an hour or two later she came back with an accordion.”“Music hath charms that soothes the savage breast,” Rosner said, and he believes it saved their lives. “He took risks and they paid off,” Rosner said. “He considers his violin to be his weapon.”
Rosner also credits Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who protected roughly 1,200 Jews. Rosner and his father met Oskar Schindler, who eventually put them on his “list” and helped them to survive at Auschwitz. After the Nazis moved Rosner and his father to other camps, Schindler employed his mother and held onto the violin and accordion.
“The irony is that after the war, after we liberated and we were reunited with my mother, when she came to Munich to meet us she had his violin and my accordion. Oskar Schindler found those instruments somewhere, somehow and he gave it to her to bring to us,” said Rosner. In 1945, both Rosner and his father were sent on a death march to Dachau, but managed to survive, and were liberated by the American forces and moved to the United States.
The accordion accompanied the family to Queens and spent decades in a basement until Rosner met Steven Markowitz at a tennis court.“He told us about the accordion and says, ‘By the way, I still have that accordion, it’s in my basement. Would you guys like it?’” said Markowitz, chairman of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. The red and white child’s accordion is now part of an exhibit at the center, along with other artifacts including a child’s shoe, a swastika flag, striped prisoner’s uniform, and a Star of David light bulb. “It’s a relic from a time past, but it is evidence that I’m not a figment of someone’s imagination,” Rosner said.
At Steven Spielberg’s invitation, Alexander Rosner, his parents, uncle, aunt and cousin took part in the filming of the epilogue scenes of Schindler’s List in Jerusalem, which became part of the film. In the last scene…the Rosners, accompanied by the actors who portray them in the film, place stones on Oskar Schindler’s grave and are identified by name. The film received several Academy Awards in 1993. Alex’s late father’s violin is on permanent display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. His accordion is on display at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County in Glen Cove, Long Island, NY.
In 1994, Mr. Rosner began speaking publicly in high schools, universities and houses of worship throughout the Unites States about Schindler’s List and bigotry. Students have been eager to question him, as a Holocaust survivor, because he was then old enough to remember surviving the concentration camps, and is now young enough to effectively communicate with them. One unexpected result of these talks is that listeners have been inspired to see their own challenging life experiences in a more positive way.
Learn more about the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County in the documentary Treasures of New York: The Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center.
Photo: This accordion—which belonged to Holocaust survivor Alex Rosner—is one of the artifacts on permanent display at the Tolerance Center of Nassau County, which helps create historical context for visitors to carry forward hard-learned truths from the 20th century. | Photo by Hillary Viders