Lex van Weren
(1920-1996)

Lex van Weren, a Dutch musician who survived Auschwitz by playing the trumpet in a band during departure and return of fellow Jews from forced labor, has died at age 76. After being imprisoned in Camp Westerbork, he was sent to Auschwitz on the next train. (He was interned at the Janina oal Mines, a satellite camp of Auschwitz). The camp kommando commander wanted him to play 'silent night' at christmas eve and so he did, so that he was affecetd as the Auschwitz-orchestra's trumpetist Mr. Van Weren, whose experience in the Nazi death camp was later recorded in a television documentary and a biography titled, "Trumpeter of Auschwitz," died Wednesday July 31, 1996 of cancer, said friend Raph Polak. Mr. Van Weren was among the 56,500 Dutch Jews deported to Auschwitz during World War II. Less than 1,000 of them survived the camp. He was a member of a band made up of Jewish inmates, said historian David Barnouw of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. "The band would play whatever the Germans wanted," said Mr. Barnouw. At the beginning of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Mr. Van Weren was a member of the city's Jewish Symphony Orchestra, reported the Amsterdam daily Het Parool. After the war, besides playing with the City Theater Orchestra, he also ran a cafe. In an earlier interview with Het Parool, he said, "I still wonder how I could have played music at death's door."

Dick Walda Trompettist in Auschwitz. Herinnerungen von Lex van Weren. Aus dem Niederländischen von Heinz Schneeweiß. De Bataafsche Leeuw, Amsterdam, 1989 ISBN : 9-01003-146-2

Bernard Drukker - It's in the air City Bell-ringer Bernard Drukker on the carillon of the Munt Tower in Amsterdam and the City Theatre Orchestra directed by Lex van Weren Philips 433 013 PE