Thursday, 23 May 2024. Today the google doodle is celebrating the invention of the accordion. And we are celebrating Esther Bejarano. She was born in 1924 as the daughter of a Jewish cantor in Saarlouis. Her life was saved in Auschwitz by an accordion and a lie.

Because she often sang to herself despite the exhausting hard labour in the camp, and her fellow inmates knew that she was a musician and could play the piano, she was eventually asked to audition for the women’s orchestra in the camp. “We don't have a piano here,” said the director of the women’s orchestra in Birkenau which often had to perform for the SS. “But we do have an accordion. Can you play the accordion?”

And the courageous, little big, Esther Bejarano answered “yes”, even though she had never even touched an accordion before. After being allowed to practise a bit in a corner of a barrack in the women's camp, she gave her audition. With immense concentration and effort she drew the notes out of the instrument. She played for her life.

Esther Bejarano and the accordion. It was a love that lasted throughout her life and which above all helped her to survive Auschwitz − even though she had to look the murderers in the eye while “playing”; even though she knew why the windows of her practice barrack were opened when groups of newly arrived Jewish families passed by her barrack on the camp road. The people were completely terrified, starving and almost dying of thirst. On the way to the gas chambers, they listened to the music, heard Esther's accordion, and they smiled. It can't be all that bad here. They’re making music. And Esther wept.

After a long and varied life, Esther Bejarano died in Hamburg in 2021. She went on stage with her message almost until the end of her life, little big Esther Bejarano with her accordion.

Thank you, Esther