Lily Mathé, the Gypsy Violinist of Kilburn

Lily Mathé was born in the town of Eger Hungary, in 1910 as Lily Markstein. She began attending a teacher training college but dropped out and went to Budapest to study violin. In 1932 she adopted the stage name Lily Mathé and set up a gypsy band. She first played in Hungary with the group and then settled in Paris for a few years. Here they performed at the restaurant Hungaria, in the Cirque Medrano, and on the radio. The band also toured in Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

 

In 1939, Lily moved to the Netherlands after the beginning of WWII, returning to live with her family in Budapest two years later. Following the German occupation of Budapest in the spring of 1944, Lily was arrested with her parents and other family members and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Her parents were gassed soon after their arrival. Lily however, became a member of the women’s orchestra and in the autumn of 1944 they were transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. There she worked in the weaving mill and had to play music for the camp commandant Josef Kramer.

Badly ill, she was freed on 15 April 1945 by the British army when they took Bergen-Belsen. Shortly after emigrating to Britain in February 1947, she married Edward Bernstein, a Viennese member of the British army who had participated in the liberation of the camp.  

Edward and Lily lived quietly at No.3 Douglas Road in Kilburn (off Willesden Lane). During the 1950s and 60s Lily worked as the leader of a gypsy group in the Aldwych Brasserie restaurant.

After the War Adolf Eichmann managed to escape to Argentina under a false identity. Simon Wiesenthal spent years tracking him down. In May 1960 he was captured by Mossad agents in Buenos Aires and taken to Israel. Lily gave evidence against him during his trial. Eichmann was convicted in December 1961 and hanged in June 1962.

In February 1961 Lily appeared in an ITV film about Eichmann and Bergen-Belsen where she said that when Josef Kramer met her he had hummed a tune and asked her to play it on a violin he gave her. He said, ‘If you can’t, you will die’. She made an effort which seemed to please him and he told her, ‘You have saved your life’. She was taken to Eichmann who said, ‘You will lead a camp orchestra to welcome the new inmates and play at the officers’ mess every evening.’ 

Kramer, known by the press as ‘The Butcher of Belsen’, was arrested at the camp in April 1945 and following his trial he was executed.

Josef Kramer arrested by British Troops at Belsen, April 1945

 

Lily survived the horror of the camps and died on 16 Dec 1985 at 17 Kenilworth Road in Edgware.  

She was not the only woman involved in the death camp orchestras. In 1980 Vanessa Redgrave played Fania Fénelon in the film Playing for Time which was based on her experience in Auschwitz, where she and a group of classical musicians were spared in return for performing music for the Nazis.