A Remarkable Woman

Last night I watched a programme which had been recorded when Alice Sommer Hertz was 98. She is now 106 and living in London. When she was over 100 years of age she was going to the University three times a week for the Third Age. She is a concert pianist and survivor of Nazi concentration camps. Born in Prague to a family of musicians (her mother played with Gustave Mahler as a child) She lost most of her loved ones in the Holocaust but listening to Alice speak passionately of her love of music –‘it is our language – it is our food’ with her eternal optimism – ‘Life is beautiful – extremely beautiful’ was an uplifting and inspiring experience.

Almost every night she dreams of the moment when she and her child and all the other women from Theresienstadt were marched into a field and told to line up in rows of ten. In the distance they could see their men folk and they were never to see them again. The women stood in the bitter cold waiting to be shot and then a Czech voice rang out with the order:

‘Back to the Ghetto!’ and she said that from being Hell the ghetto became Paradise. Asked many times what one feels when one knows it is one’s last moment on earth she said there is no fear – just blackness – a black curtain comes down.

Interspersed throughout the programme she played the piano - she practises two and a half hours every day and said the German composers were geniuses. She didn’t want to ever speak of the atrocities that were committed but said it was extremely hard to have a child who is always hungry and not be able to feed him. She had no hate in her heart for Germans but said Hitler was a mad man and she could never understand why people had followed him. She maintained that if Hitler had listened to two bars of the music he would have hated less.

In the ghetto were a band of musicians and throughout all the privation and suffering the music gave them joy – they were healthy because of playing the music every night

‘It is the most beautiful thing that life can bring you. To my last day I will believe it helped me and made my life beautiful – it made me happy.’

Alice believed that her twin sister would not have had such a short life if she had not been a pessimist. She told Alice that it was a terrible world and when she died in Israel Alice came to live in London. Alice said three things were her religion.

#1 The love of a mother for her child

#2 The joy of nature.

#3 The joy of music. ‘We speak about music and we are happy.’

Asked what she has learned:

That she is grateful to her mother for telling her to learn, learn, and learn and to be thankful for everything – everything is a present. ‘Fill your life with beauty. Life is extremely beautiful – nature is beautiful and love is beautiful. Work the brain.’

Her beloved son also a gifted musician – a cellist - died aged 67.

Aged 104 Alice became famous with the publication of her book ‘The Garden of Eden in Hell’. I tried to find a you tube of Alice playing but there was only the whole programme, so below is Beethoven – one of her geniuses