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Oldest known Holocaust survivor dies
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Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest known Holocaust survivor and the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, has died in London, aged 110.
Herz-Sommer, originally from Prague in what is now the Czech Republic, spent two years of World War II in Czechoslovakia’s Terezin concentration camp, where she entertained inmates by playing the piano.
Grandson Ariel Sommer said on Sunday: “Alice Sommer passed away peacefully this morning with her family by her bedside.
“She loved us, laughed with us, and cherished music with us,” he added.
Herz-Sommer died in hospital after being admitted on Friday, daughter-in-law Genevieve Sommer said.
In short documentary “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life,” Herz-Sommer shares her life story and describes the importance of music and laughter.
The 38-minute film, directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Malcolm Clarke, has been nominated for best short documentary at the Academy Awards next Sunday.
“Even as her energy slowly diminished, her bright spirit never faltered,” said producer Nick Reed.
Herz-Sommer, husband Leopold and their son Stephan were sent in 1943 to Terezin concentration camp, where inmates staged concerts in which often she starred.
An estimated 140,000 Jews were sent to Terezin and 33,430 died there. About 88,000 were moved to Auschwitz and other death camps, where most were killed.
Herz-Sommer and her son were among fewer than 20,000 liberated in 1945.
Yet Herz-Sommer remembered herself as “always laughing” in Terezin, where making music kept them going.
In the film, she says, “Life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful.”
Though she never learned where her mother died after being rounded up and her husband died of typhus at Dachau, in her old age Herz-Sommer expressed little bitterness. In another clip she says “I never hate. Hatred brings only hatred.”
Herz-Sommer was born on November 26, 1903, in Prague, and started learning the piano from her sister at the age of five.
She married Leopold Sommer in 1931 and their son was born in 1937.
In 1949, she left Czechoslovakia to join her twin sister Mizzi in Jerusalem. She taught at the Jerusalem Conservatory until 1986, when she moved to London.
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