Background
Diamand was born in Berlin on 8 June 1913, and educated there, but held Austrian nationality.
administrator director pianist secretary
Diamand was born in Berlin on 8 June 1913, and educated there, but held Austrian nationality.
While there, he worked as secretary to pianist Artur Schnabel. Diamand spent some time in a Dutch concentration camp before escaping. He and his mother needed to hide from the Nazis, in attics and other cramped places, with inadequate food.
Schnabel"s last student, pianist Maria Curcio, looked after them, at great risk and high cost to her own health and career.
They divorced in 1971. He appeared as a "castaway" on the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 15 August 1966, and was made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1972.
Diamand died on 16 January 1998, in Amsterdam.
In the early 1930s, being Jewish, he fled to Amsterdam to escape Nazism.