The Hungarian pianist who survived the war – and so did his beloved instrument

Roxanne de Bastion never intended to write a book. In March 2021, the singer-songwriter decided to mark International Piano Day with a brief Twitter thread outlining the extraordinary survival story of her Hungarian grandfather, Stephen, and his beloved instrument.

Chance, as with most stories of surviving the Holocaust, played a big part for Stephen. While the stakes were clearly not as high, there was an element of fortune involved for his granddaughter too. The tweets did not go viral but were shared just widely enough to be seen by the right person, a literary agent who felt this remarkable tale should be expanded into a book.

The result is The Piano Player of Budapest, a work of non-fiction that rattles along like an airport thriller. We meet, appropriately enough, at Stephens House in Finchley on the anniversary of my own grandmother’s death, a woman who escaped France in her youth before marrying an Auschwitz survivor and settling in England.

De Bastion explains that she was not brought up Jewish in any meaningful way: “I didn’t grow up with any sense of what being Jewish means. My dad and his sister were brought up to be as English as possible. Their parents’ trauma ran deep and my dad would get bristly if the subject of Jewishness even came up.”

For the author, the writing of the book was a journey of self-discovery and not just because she was transitioning from songwriting to prose. She recalled arguments in her youth between her father and her aunt, during which the former would insist he was not Jewish and his sister adamant that he was, whether he liked it or not.

These contradictory familial viewpoints are at the heart of The Piano Player of Budapest, a Shoah memoir constructed from countless letters, documents and hours of Stephen’s own testimony recorded decades after the events described. Even within the family, debate has raged over the years about exactly what kind of person this man was. What is undeniable is that the author’s grandfather was an accomplished pianist and film composer on the verge of greatness before the advent of war.  Almost overnight, his primary concerns were no longer the stuff of life such as women or his next concert but, instead, the Nazis and evading death.

De Bastion inherited the titular piano when her father, Stephen’s son, died in 2019. She considers the book a love letter to her dad and a way of “absorbing some of that grief”. There was a concerted effort to try and discover how much of the son and granddaughter might be found within Stephen and his story. Another primary objective was to draw a parallel between then and now which, she feels, is more relevant at the time of publication than when work began on the book, not least in the wake of the recent elections in Europe.

There was not just a tremendous sense of responsibility in attempting to capture Stephen in prose. While the family members were all supportive, De Bastion notes: “It’s not always easy. With stories like this and families of this sort of size, through time everyone has their own passed-down version of things. Details become of great importance to people so it didn’t always go completely without discussion over whose version of events was right. Ultimately, though, it was Stephen’s story I was telling.”

That story is deftly told by a writer who honed her craft penning a tour blog during her early years on the road as a musician. The extended musical metaphors in The Piano Player of Budapest serve to underline the bond that connects Stephen and his granddaughter despite his dying when she was very young. De Bastion might not remember her father’s father but she’s memorialised him expertly. Indeed, ‘May his memory be for a blessing’ has rarely felt more apposite.

There are times on the recordings when Stephen, like so many Holocaust survivors, simply could not or would not put into words the things he experienced. The most notable example occurs when the testimony almost glosses over the events that occurred at Mauthausen concentration camp. It is not a sin of omission but rather a coping mechanism of an ageing man not wishing to analyse the horrors of his youth. My own grandfather said nothing of his experiences in the camps for decades and it was not until he was in his 60s until the floodgates finally opened. For the author, it was the omissions that were most upsetting, and she made the decision to fill in the gaps as ethically as possible through extensive research:

“I really felt the need to get the balance right of not shying away from just how horrific it was but also doing it in a way that was respectful of Stephen and everyone else who suffered something similar.”

Before he had a family of his own, Stephen was fond of saying: “We’re going to die out like the dinosaurs.” Ultimately his children and grandchildren are the ultimate riposte to the Nazis and how fitting that a family member should be the one to capture his story for posterity, simultaneously an act of devotion and a warning at a time where it feels especially urgent.

January will mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz and, as survivors die out and the Holocaust makes the uneasy journey from living history to history, such stories are more important than ever.

The Piano Player of Budapest is published by Hachette, £22