Playing for Time

Front Cover
Syracuse University Press, Sep 1, 1997 - Biography & Autobiography - 276 pages
In 1943, Fania Fénelon was a Paris cabaret singer, a secret member of the Resistance, and a Jew. Captured by the Nazis, she was sent to Auschwitz, and later, Bergen-Belsen. With unnerving clarity and an astonishing ability to find humor where only despair should prevail, the author charts her eleven months as one of "the orchestra girls"; writes of the loves, the laughter, hatreds, jealousies, and tensions that racked this privileged group whose only hope of survival was to make music.

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About the author (1997)

Fania Fénelon was a singer living in Paris. During World War II she smuggled information to the French Resistance before her arrest in 1943 by the Nazis. After the war she resumed her career as an entertainer until her retirement in 1972. In 1983 Fénelon died of cancer in Paris. Her book Playing for Time eventually became a popular television movie and a stageplay.

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