Alma Rosé and Váša Příhoda from 1927 to 1936. Critical Comments on Newman’s Biography of Alma Rosé

Abstract

The study presents critical commentary on a biography of the Austrian violinist and Holocaust victim Alma Rosé (1906–1944) published by the Canadian musicologist Richard Newman. Alma is famous primarily for having conducted the girls’ camp orchestra at the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The study is mainly devoted to the period of the late 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, when Alma was the partner of the Czech violin virtuoso Váša Příhoda (1900–1960). In the study, the author’s examination of relevant sources refutes certain traditional legends that are still in circulation about Alma and her marriage to Příhoda. The study covers the history of Příhoda’s villa in Záryby and also outlines the life of Příhoda’s second wife Jindřiška, née Kreuz. The questions of A. Rosé’s Czechoslovak citizenship and Prague residency are dealt with in detail. There is a listing of Alma’s known performances in Czechoslovakia in the latter half of the 1920s and in the 1930s. At the conclusion, the study points out basic historical inaccuracies in theatrical plays about Alma Rosé, which were premiered in the Czech Republic in 2022: this involves a play by the Polish author Mariusz Urbanek titled Alma and Martina Kinská’s Czech drama Because of Alma.