Karp, Natalia

▪ 2008

Natalia Weissman 

      Polish-born concert pianist

born Feb. 27, 1911, Krakow, Austria-Hungary [now in Poland]

died July 9, 2007, London, Eng.

survived a Nazi concentration camp in part on the strength of her musical talent. She made her professional debut in Berlin in 1929 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra but later returned to Krakow to care for her family. Karp, who was Jewish, was arrested in 1943, and the Gestapo sent her to the Plaszow forced-labour camp near Krakow. The camp's commander, Amon Göth (who was later depicted in the 1993 film Schindler's List), learned of her reputation and ordered her to play for him at his birthday party. Moved by her rendition of a Chopin nocturne, he decreed that she should not be put to death. Later she was transferred to Auschwitz. After World War II ended, she resumed her career, relocating in 1947 to London with her second husband, Polish diplomat Josef Karpf. Her experiences were recounted in The War After: Living with the Holocaust (1996) by her journalist daughter, Anne Karpf.

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