According to Wikipedia:
Harry Waldau (* 7 April 1876 in Liegnitz as Valentin Pinner; † March 1943 in Auschwitz concentration camp) was a German pianist, composer, and lyricist.
Little is known about Waldau / Pinner's childhood and youth in Lower Silesia, including his education. It is assumed that he began his career as a singer and actor on buffoon and operetta stages.
Pinner lived in Berlin as a bandleader and pianist and wrote music and lyrics for the entertainment stage and cabaret as "Harry Waldau" in the 1910s and 1920s. Well-known artists of the time interpreted them. Gramophone recordings of many of his works have survived. In April 1921 he became house bandmaster at the cabaret "Schall und Rauch". For a time he ran a cabaret himself in Berlin.
Pinner worked with lyricists like A.O.Alberts, Richard Rillo and Hanns Dekner and with composers like Rudolf Nelson, Max Niederberger and Alfred Pickert. With Nelson and A.O.Alberts he wrote the revue "Wetten dass...?" in 1919, with Niederberger he wrote the operetta Der Liebesexpress, which was also filmed in 1931. For Leo Ascher's operetta Bravo Peggy, which premiered in Berlin on 29 April 1932, he wrote the libretto together with Walter Lichtenberg and Armin Robinson.
He also composed music for several films. In 1914, he even conducted a cinema band himself.
After the National Socialists' "seizure of power" in 1933, he was no longer allowed to work as an artist of Jewish descent and faced racial persecution.
Pinner last lived in Wilmersdorf at Xantener Straße 6. At the age of 67, he was taken from his flat on 2 March 1943, deported to Poland and killed there in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Harry Waldau is not to be confused with Theodor Waldau, whose real name was Dorku Goldberg and who was also a pop poet: as "Wauwau" he wrote many songs with Hermann Leopoldi. He was killed in Buchenwald concentration camp on 27 March 1942.
On 17 May 2017, a Stolperstein was laid in front of his former residence, Xantener Straße 6, Berlin-Wilmersdorf.
