Playing for Time

Playing for Time is a book by Fania Fénelon. First published in 1976 and most recently in 1997, it is Fénelon’s account of how she survived the Holocaust by becoming an orchestra girl in Auschwitz. The book received great praise upon its publication and was subsequently made into a film, which received mixed reviews. Before her imprisonment in Auschwitz, Fénelon was a secret member of the Resistance, a Jew and a singer in the Paris Cabaret. She was one of the few survivors and she gives us a unique insight into life inside a concentration camp.

The book opens with Fania trying to keep playing the piano one evening even though she’s dying from starvation and thirst. She describes the memory in sharp and distressing detail, from the bones in her fingers to bathing in and drinking her own urine. She describes everything then falling silent, with no one understanding why. She’s not sure if it’s fantasy or reality until someone from the BBC hands her a microphone—she and others like her are liberated from the camp.

The narrative then moves back in time to when Fania first arrives at Birkenau, which is the extermination camp within the Auschwitz prison zone. She and others arrive on the pretence that they’re going to a work camp, but once they get there and see the conditions they’ll live in, they realise the truth. She describes how degrading it is to be stripped, shaved and tattooed, and the pain of realising you’re not a real person to these captors anymore.



Fania finds a friend, Clara, and they cling to each other in those early days as they wait to find out what’s going to happen to them. They share a dormitory with hundreds of other women, and life becomes about nothing more than staying alive. Fania remarks that the SS have vans which look like the Red Cross, and how so many people pile into these vans assuming they’re safe, only to die under false pretences.

In January 1944, Fania asks to join the orchestra. This is a critical time because being able to play a musical instrument is one of the few ways anyone hopes to survive Auschwitz. While they are useful, for example as entertainers, there’s a chance the SS will keep them alive. Fania almost misses the chance to play because she barely hears someone shouting for musicians, and she takes a risk by speaking out of turn and putting herself forward for it.

Something surprising about the camp is how the prisoners act towards each other. Fania describes a kind of “survival of the fittest” whereby stronger prisoners overrun the weaker. There’s no sense of community or unity—perhaps because everyone is so terrified, they’re only interested in their own survival. Fania, however, knows Clara can sing, and begs for her to join the orchestra, too.



The orchestra isn’t glamorous, but the girls do get some privileges like proper clothing and toilet facilities. They keep the SS happy and play marching music for the work gangs, and welcome music for new prisoners arriving. Fania describes a hierarchy, from first violinist down to herself, and how she tries to carve out her place there. She recalls the constant fear of disappointing the SS and being selected for death.

Fania doesn’t remember everyone in the orchestra fondly. She recalls how the leader enjoys abusing her position and tormenting others in the camp. She even saves a toddler from execution one day because she’s bored and wants someone to boss about for a few days. She later gives the boy over to the SS to die. Fania tells us all of this in very frank detail and she doesn’t shy away from honesty.

Fania tells us more about why she gets arrested in the first place. Her cover is blown while she worked for the French Resistance in 1943. The Germans discover that Fania’s father is a Jew called Jules Goldstein. She doesn’t deny the revelation because she wants to die a Jew if she must die at German hands.



Politics play a big part in their lives inside the camp. There are Jews from all over Europe in the one place and their ideologies differ. This is another reason why the prisoners don’t band together and find comfort in unity. It’s rare to get a glimpse into this side of life in concentration camps, and it reminds us how hopeless it had to feel for the prisoners.

Fania’s honest about the brutality she and the others experience at the hands of the SS, and what daily life is like. There’s nothing dignified about life as an orchestra girl and the abuse they suffer at the hands of their masters. Music doesn’t bring anyone joy and it’s used to hide the truth about the camps and what happens to people inside them.