I didn't know my childhood music trainer was Adolf Hitler's pianist

When Liz Slaven was a schoolgirl, she took piano classes. Her trainer, Walter Hambock, was advisable by considered one of her classmates.

Hambock gave him weekly classes and helped him go his music exams within the early Nineteen Seventies.

Liz thought her buddy was joking when she mentioned the composer had labored for a historic determine.

Only later in life did he be taught that his music trainer was truly Adolf Hitler's pianist.

Recently the story of Hambock has come to gentle – a quiet, unassuming musician who caught the eye of a German chief, however was then punished by the Nazi regime, which killed tens of millions of Jews within the Holocaust throughout World War II.

Walter Hambock was born in Vienna, Austria in 1910 and have become an achieved pianist.

His abilities – which included taking part in Beethoven's music – got here to the eye of senior Nazis.

He advisable him to Hitler and Hambock spent a number of years taking part in for him every time his providers have been demanded.

However, his life was turned the other way up in early 1940 when he was arrested and brought to Berlin after coming back from attending a live performance with a Jewish conductor in Holland.

He was then despatched to Dachau focus camp on the grounds of being politically unreliable, after which to Flossenbürg camp.

He got here out of the camp in April 1945.

Hambock later moved to Scotland, the place he married Helen Weir in 1962.

The couple settled in Aberdeenshire, with Hambock taking over the place of organist at Strichen Parish Church. His spouse taught on the native stage.

He was additionally publishing music, and took on roles in the neighborhood corresponding to musical director of the Fraserburgh Musical Society.

Their story got here to public consideration years later when novice historian Billy Watson was trying by way of archived copies of the Fraserburgh Herald – which lined the Strichen space – within the Fraserburgh Library.

There he discovered articles in regards to the musician's arrival.

He mentioned, “I was reading a 60-year-old copy of the Fraserburgh Herald, and the first page – it was a big broadsheet at the time – was full of little local stories.”

“One of the reports that came out was that the local Music Society had appointed a new music director, describing an international professor of music who lived in the small village of Strichen.

“His title was Walter Hambock, I assumed it was a German or Austrian title, and I assumed perhaps there was a narrative right here. So I simply went on the hunt to seek out out about him.”

As he looked further into the records, he had a moment of “shock and delight” at the details of the link to Hitler.

The Fraserburg Herald article states: “Walter Hambock now spends many evenings within the solitude of the Strichen Parish Church taking part in the organ with recollections of Nazism and focus camps within the background.

“It is difficult to associate this quiet, simple but talented composer with the Hitler regime, and it is an association he wishes to forget.”

Billy mentioned there was a “fantastic response” to his analysis, and Hambock was remembered for his “warmth and friendliness” by individuals who acknowledged he had a previous he didn’t wish to speak about.

The couple later moved to Newmans, North Lanarkshire, and one of many individuals who remembers them from that point is Liz Slaven.

Liz, 71, who now lives in Longside, Aberdeenshire, began taking piano classes on the age of 10.

As she grew up, and it was time for fifth and sixth yr exams, a classmate advisable her to her music trainer that she was actually good.

“He said he played for Hitler and I said 'Yeah, that would be perfect'.”

He didn’t imagine him.

“When I met him for the first time, I wanted to play for him,” she recalled. “I went upstairs and there was a piano stuffed with stacks of music.

“I was really nervous, he was sitting next to me, and at the end of it he said to me 'Beethoven doesn't write for you, Haydn writes for you.' I have never forgotten it.

“For Beethoven you want large palms, you want power, and I don't have that. I must play extra delicate sorts of issues.”

She was Hambock's pupil for about a year and a half and he made her take the high and seventh grade music exams.

“Nothing was ever mentioned about Hitler,” he said. “For so lengthy I didn't actually imagine it, it was only a story, and solely later after he died I learn it in black and white.”

Hambock died in 1979 at the age of 70 and was buried in Airdrie.

The couple never had children of their own, but their granddaughter Helen Duncan lives in Fort William.

The 54-year-old is determined to see his life story in print one day.

“Their story introduced me and my husband to tears,” she mentioned.

“It seems that everybody who knew him thought extremely of him. I wrongly thought individuals have been not all for 'warfare tales'.

“But it goes further than that – and many people were not Hitler's pianists.”

Liz Slaven mentioned she is going to at all times bear in mind Walter Hambock fondly.

“He was a very nice older gentleman and a very good piano player,” she mentioned.

“That was humbling, I didn't really feel like I was getting piano lessons.”

He mentioned of the entire outstanding story: “It's amazing how people meet and how their paths cross.

“I believe he made me piano participant, not a grasp, however very unhealthy. It's a very nice reminiscence and one thing I'll always remember.”