I didn't believe my music teacher was Hitler's pianist

Liz Slaven is still a keen musician more than 50 years after her piano lessons

When Liz Slaven was a schoolgirl, she took up piano lessons. Her tutor, Walter Hambock, was recommended to her by a classmate.

Hambock gave her weekly lessons and helped her pass her music exams in the early 1970s.

Liz thought her friend had been joking when she said that the musician had worked for a historical figure.

It was only later in life that she discovered her music teacher had in fact been Adolf Hitler's pianist.

Walter Hambock moved to Scotland where he taught and published music

It is only recently that Hambock's story has emerged - a quiet, unassuming musician who caught the ear of the German leader but was then punished by the Nazi regime that killed millions of Jews in the Holocaust during World War Two.

Walter Hambock was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1910, and became an accomplished pianist.

His skills - including playing the music of Beethoven - came to the attention of senior Nazis.

They recommended him to Hitler, and Hambock spent several years playing for him whenever his services were demanded.

However, his life was turned upside down in early 1940 when he was arrested and taken to Berlin after returning from playing in a concert with a Jewish conductor in Holland.

Adolf Hitler took his own life in 1945 when facing defeat in the war

He was then sent to the Dachau concentration camp on the grounds of being politically unreliable, and then onto Flossenburg camp.

He emerged from the camp in April 1945.

Hambock would later move to Scotland, where he married Helen Weir in 1962.

The couple settled in Aberdeenshire, with Hambock taking up the position of organist at Strichen Parish Church. His wife taught locally.

Hambock took a job as the organist at this church in Aberdeenshire in the 1960s

He was also publishing music, and took on roles in the community such as musical director of Fraserburgh Musical Society.

His story has come to public attention all these years later after amateur historian Billy Watson was looking in archived copies of the Fraserburgh Herald - which covered the Strichen area - in Fraserburgh Library.

There he found articles about the musician's arrival.

Walter Hambock featured in old local newspaper articles

"I was reading a 60-year-old copy of the Fraserburgh Herald, and the front page - it was a big broadsheet at the time - was packed with small local stories," he said.

"One of the reports stood out, the local music society had appointed a new musical director, described an an international professor of music, staying in the tiny village of Strichen.

"His name was Walter Hambock, I thought that was a German or Austrian name, and I thought there's maybe a story here. So I just went on the hunt to find out about him."

As he looked through the archives more, there was a moment of "shock and delight" at details of the link to Hitler.

Billy Watson used old newspaper archives for his research

The Fraserburgh Herald article stated: "Walter Hambock now spends many evenings in the solitude of Strichen Parish Church playing the organ with the memories of Nazism and concentration camps far in the background.

"It is difficult to associate this quiet, unassuming but brilliant musician with the Hitler regime, and it is an association he wants to forget."

Billy said there had been a "fantastic response" to his research, and that Hambock was fondly remembered for his "warmth and friendliness" by people who had accepted he had a past he did not want to speak about.

The couple later moved to Newmains in North Lanarkshire, and one of the people who remembers him from that time is Liz Slaven.

Liz, 71, who now lives in Longside in Aberdeenshire, had started learning the piano at 10.

Liz Slaven is pictured as a schoolgirl in the 1970s

As she got older, and it came to time for exams in fifth and sixth year, a classmate recommended her own music teacher as being really good.

"She said he played for Hitler and I said 'aye that'll be right'."

She didn't believe her.

"When I first met him I had to play for him," she recalled. "I went upstairs and there was a piano full of piles of music.

"I was really nervy, he sat beside me, and at the end of it he said to me 'Beethoven does not write for you, Haydn writes for you'. I have never forgotten that.

"For Beethoven you need big hands, you need strength, and I did not have that. I need to play more delicate-type things."

She was Hambock's pupil for about a year-and-a-half, and he took her through her Higher and Grade Seven music exams.

"Nothing was ever said about Hitler," she said. "For so long I did not really believe it, it was just a story, and it was only later after he died I read it in black and white."

Liz Slaven (Craig was her maiden name) was presented for examination by Hambock

Hambock died in 1979, aged 70, and was buried in Airdrie.

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

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

"His story reduces myself and my husband to tears," she said.

"Everyone that knew him thought highly of him it appears. I thought, wrongly, that people are no longer interested in 'war stories'.

"But it goes beyond that - and not many were Hitler's pianist."

Liz Slaven said she will always remember Walter Hambock fondly.

"He was just a really nice old gentleman and a really good piano player," she said.

"He was gentle, I did not really feel I was getting a piano lesson."

She added of the entire remarkable story: "It's amazing how people meet and their paths cross.

"I think he made me into a good piano player, not a maestro, but nae bad. It's a really nice memory and something I will never forget."