Of Exile and Music

Eva Mayer Schay was born to Jewish parents in Cologne, Germany, on August 24, 1931. During Hitler's rise to power, her parents emigrated to the island of Mallorca. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the family was repatriated to Germany, where Eva's father was arrested. Next came Italy, then South Africa, where Eva underwent her schooling, musical training, and university. Her father died on her fourteenth birthday, after the end of World War II. In 1953, she won a scholarship for further violin studies in England with the great pedagogue Max Rostal. Returning to South Africa, she played with the SABC Symphony Orchestra and subsequently with the Durban Civic Orchestra. Deploring the apartheid regime, Mayer Schay and her mother emigrated to England in 1961. She taught violin and worked as freelance musician until after her marriage, when she joined the orchestra of English National Opera, where she remained for almost thirty years.

Set against the backdrop of some of the most dramatic episodes of the twentieth century, this autobiography presents the story of a stubborn struggle against unjust regimes, sustained by a deep belief in the strength of the human spirit and the transcendental power of music.