Nelly Nechama Ben-Or, also known as Nelly Ben-Or Clynes, was born in 1933 in Lwow in Poland.
Background
Separated from the sister, who went into hiding and who found employment as a domestic servant, Ben-Or and her mother pretended to be Roman Catholics and travelled to Warsaw where the mother worked for a Christian family for a year as a maid.
Career
She is an international concert pianist and a Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where she has taught the piano and the Alexander Technique since 1975. She is also a Holocaust survivor. Having missed the last passenger train to Warsaw, the German Station master put them on a train reserved for German Army officers.
Occasionally, when people suspected they were Jews, they would be forced to move on, but managed to escape.
They were reunited with the sister after the War. Ben-Or frequently gives talks about her experiences during the Holocaust.
She gives master classes on the technique to pianists in many countries throughout the world. She has performed in concerts and broadcasts throughout the world, in recitals, with orchestra and in chamber music
Ben-Or has made numerous commercial and broadcast recordings, including for the British Broadcasting Corporation. These recordings cover music by a wide range of composers from the 18th to the 20th centuries.
In 1999, the Nelly Ben-Or Scholarship Trust was established, whose patron is Sir Colin Davis.