The first Comic Con and making Oasis’ Wonderwall

26:36In 2015, she spoke to Simon Watts about her experience. The sort of ceremony started, you know, your hair is shaved and you get a number tattooed. And this is all done by prisoners. And these prisoners, of course, conversation starts, and who are you, what's your name, and I don't know, like an idiot, but what did you do before the war? I said, well, I used to play the cello. It wasn't the right place to even mention the cello, you know. So she said, fantastic, you'll be saved. And she said, you stand here and don't move.

27:14Amid the horror of the Nazi concentration camps, music had a special place. The SS encouraged prisoners to set up makeshift orchestras for entertainment and as a propaganda tool to dupe visitors into thinking all was well. By 1943, Auschwitz-Birkenau already had a remarkable male orchestra full of virtuosos. Now a Jewish violinist called Alma Rosé was planning something similar for the women. She was the niece of the great composer Gustav Mahler. By that time I was naked, without hair, with a number on my arm. Alma being, because the whole orchestra was a sort of showpiece, was a very reasonably dressed, I remember a camel hair coat she was wearing.

28:01And I didn't really know whether this was a prisoner or not. But then she introduced herself, you know, Alma would say. Yeah, she was trying to get this orchestra together. You'd arrived at the place where you were fully expecting that you would be killed. I know. You happened to mention that you play the cello, and then someone says there happens to be an orchestra. I mean, it must have been impossible to take in. It was impossible to take in. And, yeah, lucky me. A few days later, Ama Rosé summoned Anita to an audition. It was a formality for Anita, who'd grown up in a very musical German family, dreaming of a career as a cellist.

28:40I was taken to the music block, and there was a music block. You know, I mean, completely crazy. And so she just tucked a cello into my hand and said, play something. Of course, I hadn't touched a cello for two years by then. I could only play something slow. You know, I hadn't touched a cello. But I mean, it wasn't like giving an audition, you know, which I might not pass. She was completely delighted because I came at a time when they didn't have a cello in the orchestra. So I came as a sort of lifesaver.

29:16Anybody who could play anything tried to get into this orchestra. Of course, Alma took everybody. It was a sort of possible survival. There were people who could own who played the mandolin or something, or flute. A very impossible collection of instruments actually to do anything with. But Alma knew she had to make the orchestra good. If she didn't, the players might have been sent to the gas chamber. We didn't particularly like her because she was so strict, and Alma really had to drill people, you know, from nothing, to play. You know, some people couldn't read music. The frustration she must have gone through.

29:59She was trying to make something that we could possibly survive. Apparently we sounded quite reasonable in the end.

30:12On Sundays we had concerts, sometimes in the hospital and sometimes outside. We played, you know, light music.

30:26But marches, that was our main occupation. Every morning, every evening we played marches at the gate for the people who marched out to work in the factories because you know that Auschwitz was surrounded by factories.

30:43You know what could happen during the day that any body of the higher officers could come into the block and wanted to hear some music? Because I suppose they were exhausted from sending people to the gas chamber. One of the visitors was the Auschwitz doctor, Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death. He wanted to hear the Träumerei, and I was the one who could play the Träumerei, so I played the Träumerei to Mengele.

31:14It felt like nothing. I thought, here's this guy. I play it as fast as I can. I don't even look at him and I hope he goes out quickly. That was all my thoughts as far as I remember.

31:34It seems incredible that music had this role in a place of unconceivable horror. Yeah, it is inconceivable. It's also inconceivable that a man like Mengele even knew that there was a piece called The Träumerei. You said that a lot of the music playing, you blanked things out. Was it soothing to be able to play and indeed hear music in those circumstances? Definitely. First of all, the way we had to make music and play well, etc., has already made you concentrate on your music more than on what was going on outside. And then the wonderful thing about music is that you can have it in your head without anybody else even knowing about it, you know.

32:17I mean, you can retreat on a sort of island and play a daughter concerto or something in my brain where the filth of what was going on won't reach you.

32:45Thanks to music, Anita survived a year in Auschwitz-Birkenau. But tragically, the founder of the women's orchestra didn't survive herself. Alma appeared, I can see it now, for the rehearsal with terrible, terrible headache. And she was taken to the hospital. and died a few days later. It was never, ever explained. And we were actually taken to see her. We could walk around her. I mean, it was very unusual. You know, in a place where millions of people are killed, you're suddenly making a performance about one person. Everything was completely mad, really. I mean, even the Germans were very upset.

33:30They cherished that famous Alma. After Alma's death, the orchestra was dismantled. Anita Lasker, like most of its members, was sent to Belsen. She was liberated there in April 1945. Anita then moved to England, where she had a successful career as a cellist and co-founded the English Chamber Orchestra.

33:56I wondered, the music that you played there, Is that music still inextricably linked up with where you once played it? People think that I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. No. I've heard that before somewhere else. That music is not in any way tainted for you by the circumstances in which you play. You can't taint music. You can't. Actually, music is untouchable. I mean, that is a wonderful thing. Yeah, the Germans tainted themselves, but music? No, you can't. Nobody is that powerful.

34:39Anita Lashka-Wolfisch was speaking to Simon Watts back in 2050. The intentional and calculated death of an individual is the subject of our next item. In 1974, an execution method known as the garrotte was used for the last time in Francisco Franco's Fascist Spain. It involved the condemned person being strapped to a chair with a metal collar tightened by a screw to break the neck. The regime used it to execute two young men on the same day. The last was Salvador Puich Antic, a 25-year-old Catalan member of an anarchist group. Stefania Gozza has been speaking to his sister, Carme Puich Antic, about her brother's death and why more than 50 years later he remains a symbol of resistance to Franco's rule.

35:27This story contains strong language.

35:38It's what they call the final vigil. It's a night when, unlike during normal visiting hours, you can touch him. There are no bars between you. That's Karma Puchantic, one of Salvador's sisters. She's here to tell us how her brother became a symbol of resistance to Francisco Franco's regime. The new ruler of Spain rides into the city of his conquest. Behind him is moors, his army lines the route.

36:11Generalissimo Franco became a dictator in 1939 when the Spanish Civil War ended. He wanted everyone to submit to his authority or they would be taken to jail or a police station where everyone was tortured.

36:28There were six of us, my eldest brother in the U.S., then came my sister Irma, Salvador, my sister Monse, me, and my younger sister Marzona. My parents were Republicans. They had opposed Franco in the war. My father was first in a concentration camp in France and then in a prison in Spain. He was also sentenced to death, but later pardoned. So in our house, we never discussed these things out of fear. And although Salvador kept that silence at home, outside, he wasn't afraid to speak out. Salvador hated injustice. He couldn't stand it. When he was at school, he used to tutor a boy with learning disabilities.

37:15One day, he heard a teacher call the boy a retard. He stood up and punched the teacher. As he grew older, this defiant streak led him to join an anarchist group. It was called the Iberian Liberation Movement. They robbed banks and then gave the stolen money to working-class people. It was a tiny, short-lived group with no more than a dozen members. He didn't want us to know. But the family began to notice changes in his behaviour. We would never see him. And when my mother died, he came home to say goodbye with glasses that had no lenses and a suit instead of the jeans he always wore. He had gone on the ground.

38:04He'd say, relax girls, it's going to be okay. He was 25. We're now in September 1973, when Karma and one of her sisters were passing a newsstand. We saw his face in a newspaper and read there had been a shooting and that he was in hospital. He had been shot in the shoulder and the mouth, so he couldn't speak. Salvador had been detained when he was meeting members of his group. The circumstances have never been clear, but he was accused of resisting the arrest. There was a struggle and shots. Some of them injured Salvador. Others killed a young police officer whose death was blamed on Salvador.

38:52Because Salvador's father was very ill, it was his four sisters, aged 12 to 27, who visited him in prison twice a week. We thought he'd be locked in for a while. But the death penalty?

39:09Spain was plunged into political turmoil following the assassination of the nation's second most important man, Admiral Elise Carrero Blanco, President of the Government and General Franco's most trusted lieutenant. The 70-year-old admiral was blown up by, it is believed, left-wing terrorists who planted a bomb either under a drain cover or beneath the presidential car... The attack had been carried out by the Bosque separatist movement, ETA. Even though Salvador had no ties to this militant group, many in Spain, including Salvador and his sisters, believed the regime wanted to revenge the assassination of President Luis Carrero Blanco and that Salvador would be the target.

39:52A military court tried Salvador and handed him not one but two death sentences. Every Friday we had to tell the lawyer where we would be in case the minister decided at their weekly meeting to carry out Salvador's sentence. He called us Friday the 1st of March 1974. We went to the prison without our younger sister because she was 12. They set four chairs and we sat with Salvador for 11 hours. Salvador's lawyers spent the night in a frantic bid for clemency. Every time we saw the lawyer, his face looked worse than the time before. But 5 a.m., we knew it was bad. But the worst news was to come. My siblings went to the toilet and I came out to the corridor.

40:45A prison officer asked me, do you know what that garrote is? And I said no. And he explained. My face must have been a picture. I didn't say a word to Salvador. So I refused to believe it was true. The sisters weren't allowed to stay for the execution. They were dismissed at 6am. Three hours later, Salvador was taken to the mail room where the executioner was waiting. The garot hadn't been used in almost a decade, so like everyone else, he was expecting a firing squad. He walked in, saw the garot, and... he swore. He used a Spanish word with no real equivalent in English, something you say when someone, or life, has played a dirty trick on you.

41:39We were stunned. Like a road? Like in the Inquisition? It's completely barbaric. In 1974,

41:52we couldn't say goodbye, or kiss, or hug. We just couldn't admit we wouldn't see each other again. Nope. We just said, see you outside. The news crossed the globe. Here's a New York Times report. The execution of Pooch was the first with political overtones, and the first by Geratin, since two anarchists were put to death in 1963. But as if to emphasize that politics had nothing to do with the case, the government this morning also executed a 33-year-old stateless person behind She in the prison in Tarragona, south of Barcelona. She shot a security guard for no apparent reason in a cafe near Tarragona in December 1972.

42:34That was the last day the garotte was used. Only a year later, Franco died and his regime with him.

42:46Today, Salvador's death has become a symbol of the regime's cruelty and the resistance that was crushed beneath it. People still remember. When I go to a place like the bank, I try to only say my father's surname, Pooch. But then they ask for my mother's, and when I say Antic, they remember. They grab my hand and say they're so sorry, or they give me a hug. It's mind-blowing. It's alucinante.

43:46Premier League has always been dominated by the Glasgow rivals Celtic and Rangers, the old firm. Reena Stanton-Sharmer tells the Hearts story through BBC Archive interviews with midfielder Gary Mackay and striker John Robbo-Robertson as they remember the joy, pressure and heartbreak of a remarkable season. We've taken the supporters along this road where we're all looking to succeed together to give Hart and the Golden Football Club pride back because it had lost a lot over the previous 20, 30 years and unfortunately we weren't able to deliver and that's something we live with. That's midfielder Gary Mackay from the 2006 BBC documentary That Was The Team That Was Hearts.

44:34Heart of Midlothian only needed one point in the final match of the season against Dundee to be crowned champions. A meteoric rise for a team which just a few years earlier had been within days of closure. So let's head to 1981 to find out how they got there. Businessman Wallace Mercer had just bought a stake in the club and they had a new manager, Alex MacDonald, and he was not impressed with what he was seeing. I just couldn't believe it. There were boys come in with bleached denims and string vests and it's unbelievable. When the wireless was gone, it was like a disco. It was out with the bleached denims and disco music and in with a gruelling fitness regime.

45:22But first, he got to work assembling his new team, including youngsters Gary Mackay and John Robertson. Everybody spoke to each other, everybody got on with each other. There wasn't anything you didn't know about anybody and there was a real happy atmosphere there. and it's important in any football club. But at that time, as I said, we had a monopoly on it. That's Robertson, or Robbo, who's the club's all-time leading goalscorer. Hearts were third from bottom and they didn't exactly have a reputation as the fittest team. Their new training schedule would take some getting used to as manager Alex MacDonald reminisced with the players John Cahoon and Henry Smith.

46:01Murder. Absolute murder. you are being sick and being sick again We did pre-season that made you sick and then made you sick on top of you sick All I kept shouting was It's okay lads, there's plenty of soup ready for you I feel sick in there myself It was starting to pay off Hearts had leapt up the league and ended 1985 on a massive high right at the top With confidence growing they were dreaming of pushing all the way for the title winning game after game. This streak had stretched to 20 matches. With eight left to go, it was time for the boys to swap their football boots for the mic and re-record an old Hearts classic.

46:54Striker Sandy Clark remembered the unusual sponsors of that version of the Hearts song, which was updated by singer Colin Chisholm in 1986. So bad is the only way to describe it. Not the song. The song in itself is brilliant. But Marshall's, the Funky Chicken Champions, I think, was the line. Before we go any further, let's have a word from our sponsors. Marshall's, the Junky Chicken Champions. There'd be this bonus depending on how many records we sold. We've got a chicken each, and that was the reward. I should have got more than one chicken because I knew all the words. So I don't know if somebody along the line, maybe after witnessing this programme, somebody at Marshall's Chunky Chickens will give me the other two or three chickens that I think I'm due for how much I put into singing that song that day.

47:43Gary Mackay still waiting for his chickens. They'd got to a record undefeated 22 league games in a row. It was a home fixture against Aberdeen in April 1986. Gary Mackay remembered that big moment. It was the focus of attention all over Britain because Aberdeen were a hugely respected club under Alec Ferguson, great players on their side, and we were what you would term the young upstarts. It ended as a one-all draw. John Cahoon scoring a late equaliser in the 87th minute. Going into that final day on May 3rd, Hearts were top of the table leading Celtic by two points Now in those days teams would get two points for a win So to win the league Hearts needed at least a draw and for Celtic to lose against St Mirren Their biggest match in decades was around the corner but all was not going to plan Four players had to be sent home with the flu The team travelled up to Dens Park to face Dundee With more than 19 ,500 supporters joining them Donning maroon sweaters and cheering them on As Mackay and Robbo recounted We felt the league was ours And it was ours It was ours for the taking A point wins us the Premier League And we started very, very well And then we felt we had a very, very strong penalty claim But they didn't get that penalty And it was Neil-Neil at half-time Here's Robbo and Mackay Recording that nail-biting second half That stage, as we said We looked good for the point If not winning the match But unfortunately I didn't even know about the kids And really the last ten minutes Eight minutes, six minutes Whatever it was Is something that will live with Any heart support that was there Any heart support that was there For the rest of their lives Albert Kidd, who Robbo mentioned there, came on as a sub and scored two goals for Dundee within the final seven minutes of the match, denying Hearts the point they needed to pip Celtic to the title on goal difference.

50:02Both Celtic and Hearts had gained 50 points across this season, but thanks to the 5-0 win against St Mirren, Celtic went on to win the league. It was gutting. Hearts had lost the league on goal difference. The players and their fans were in agony, tears streaming down faces, heads in hands. It hit Robbo really hard. How low, how drained, how empty, how flat he felt. And as I say, he felt like he'd let every single fan that's ever supported Hearts down. To have gone so long and so far and have it snatched away to death It's probably one of the cruelest things that can happen. The dream double was over and it was devastating.

50:49But Hart still had a chance of glory at the Scottish Cup final, just a week later against Aberdeen. We lost a very early goal in the second half again, but we kept pouring forward. Neil Berry hit the crossbar and it just wasn't to be. And Aberdeen completed the scoring with a goal, I think, from Billy Stark late on. And then the frustrations came out while our kid got sent off late in the match for throwing a ball at one Aberdeen players. The team by that team had gone, the legs had gone, the spirit had gone and we knew that it was going to be a season that ultimately would end up with nothing.

51:203-0. It was well and truly over. The team travelled back to Edinburgh and they were given a hero's welcome. Players were carried into the Caledonian Hotel on the shoulders of supporters. Mackay was deeply moved. I don't think any of us could have foreseen the swell of support that would be outside the hotel. I don't think any of us are ashamed to say, I mean, I know myself, that emotionally I just lost it. And you think, how many of these people still love or have loved in their time what Hart of Midlothian Football Club has brought to their lives? And that'll never leave us.

52:02Rina Stanton-Sharma with the story of the oh-so-close 1986 season for Hearts in the Scottish Premier League. Finally this week, we remember a welcome summer holiday for Swedish workers. A change in the law in the 1970s covering paid annual leave for everyone gave the nation a longer mandated break from the office or the factory. It left Sweden with some of the longest paid holidays in the world. Here's Matilda Wellen. It's July 1978. Inger Persson is 29, and she and her husband have just bought a new camper van.

52:44Back then, I was a typical Swedish woman who had children and had got married young. It was a pretty happy life. The family has already enjoyed several holidays in the Swedish countryside, which is full of forests and lakes. The first camper one was a homemade one that looked like an egg. Oh wow! And how big or small was it? It was small, but it was really great. But the summer of 1978 is different. Now the couple both have the right to five weeks of paid holiday for the first time. So we decided to go all in. We went ahead and bought a bigger camper van. It was fantastic because then we had the possibility to take ourselves off even further away.

53:43A new version of the Swedish Annual Leave Act, or Semesterlagen as it's called in Swedish, has just been passed. The 1977 law also includes the right for all workers to take four of their five weeks of vacation back to back during the warmest months between June and August. It was almost like we had won the lottery. We felt free, and it was wonderful. In the late 1970s, many other Europeans were also entitled to at least 20 days off a year. But the right to so many consecutive weeks, and up to five weeks in total, was rare. So why did Sweden decide it was so important for everyone to have long holidays?

54:36Sweden is cold and very dark in winter, and flocking to the countryside in summer became a tradition for wealthier residents back in the 1800s. Many decamped the second homes for months. By the early 1900s, growing numbers of public sector and white-collar workers were also given paid time off. The first Swedish Annual Leave Act was passed in 1938, And it was designed to create a fairer system with all workers guaranteed at least two weeks of paid vacation, including those in blue collar or industrial jobs. In the 1950s and 1960s, Sweden's longest-running prime minister, Tage Lander, expanded their rights to three and later four weeks off.

55:25He decided that now we are going to build Sweden into the best country in the world and he didn't want families to be poor, but rather they should be able to manage well. Elander was leader of the Social Democrat Party, which embraced a concept called Folkhemmet, or the people's home. The idea was that Sweden should be a safe, democratic home that embraced equality.

56:00This is Tage Lander speaking on Swedish public service television in the 1960s. He's talking about expanding free adult education and sickness insurance. There were many, many new laws. Child care, for example, was expanded, and women entered the workforce in huge numbers in the 60s. And that was new. That was completely new. Inger took jobs in health care, retail and manufacturing. She later worked for LO, a confederation of blue-collar unions, at the core of the Swedish labor movement. It strongly welcomed the Social Democrat government's plans to increase the country's holiday allowance to five weeks and guaranteed the right to four of those weeks to be back-to-back.

56:55In the late 1970s, a centre-right coalition government came into power. Some employer organisations called on these more conservative decision-makers to tone down the planned legislation, which they argued would increase costs for businesses and reduce flexibility. Some centre-right politicians agreed and even put forward a motion to adjust the plans so that companies didn't have to offer workers consecutive weeks off. But Sweden's employment minister argued that it was important to give employees long breaks for rest and relaxation. And the law was still passed. I don't remember that there was a lot of tension.

57:39From my own perspective, when we got five weeks of vacation, it was definitely long-awaited.

57:51Sweden's expanding holiday rights didn't just have an impact on family life, they also transformed business. Many factories chose to give their employees time off at the same time, and often shut down for all of July. Since I lived in a working-class town, you noticed it a lot. It was dead. There was very little going on. Today, even in big cities like Stockholm, you can still spot signs outside bars and cafes indicating that they've closed for staff holidays. But most major companies don't shut down completely now. They usually operate with skeleton staffing. Many offer temporary summer jobs, which are popular with students and others trying to get a foot in the door.

58:41There's also plenty of seasonal work around Sweden's lakes, mountains and coastlines, where tourism has expanded.

58:51Since the 1980s, many Swedes have also used their holidays to travel further afield. thanks to cheaper flights and a relatively strong economy. A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that 57 % of Swedes have been to at least 10 countries. Even Inger has enjoyed vacations abroad, without her treasured campervan. With my friends, we were a group who used to get together to sit and knit and sew. But suddenly we just said, let's head to Mallorca instead. As you can hear from us giggling, Inge found that trip more fun than sitting around with her knitting needles. But long holidays on home soil remain popular in Sweden too.

59:39However, not everyone gets a totally work-free summer these days. Growing numbers of employees now log on to check emails and messages during their vacations.

59:56Inger is retired now. She doesn't take it for granted that she was among the first Swedes to enjoy long, paid, uninterrupted summers. Do you think it would have made a big difference to your life if you hadn't had so much time off? It's hard to say, but it was cozy to have a long vacation with a family. If it had only been two weeks, for example, one wouldn't have been able to go this far or that far. And it would have ended up being very stressful and irritating. And instead, it was quite calm.

1:00:42Inga Persson was speaking to Matilda Willen in that bespoken media production for the BBC World Service produced by Maddy Savage. It's perhaps no surprise that Sweden is consistently in the top five countries in the world when ranked by happiness. That's it for this edition of the History Hour. Join us again next week as we journey back through time in the company of those who have lived through the drama of the past. This is Max Pearson from all of us here. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. We did something that no one else had ever done. There was such an excitement and energy about this moment.

1:01:16It opened the door for everything that rapidly followed. Witness history. History as told by the people who were there. I was walking in space, the first man ever to do so. I felt almost insignificant, like a tiny ant compared to the immensity of the universe. Witness history from the BBC World Service. Listen now. Search for Witness History wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:02:06And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott. So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye. I'm Simon Jack. I'm Zing Zing. And on Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of music megastar Sir Paul McCartney. Macca. As one of the primary songwriters in The Beatles. And with an extensive solo career. His work generates vast and continuous royalty streams.

1:02:45But were song royalties alone enough to break the billion? And earn him the title of the first British billionaire rock star? Find out in Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Thank you.