Temperatures will continue to fall over the next few days

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

There are many remarkable things to say about Alice Herz-Sommer, who until her death in London on Sunday was thought to be the world's oldest survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.

To start with, there's her age: Herz-Sommer was 110.

Then there are the people she knew, including writer Franz Kafka — who died in 1924.

But what has particularly touched us as we've read about her this morning is her amazingly positive view of the world.

From the documentary 'The Lady in Number 6': Alice Herz-Sommer says whether life is good or not 'depends on me.'


Bear in mind: In 1943, Herz-Sommer and her husband, Leopold Sommer, and their son, Raphael, were sent from Prague to a Nazi camp for Jews in the Czech city of Terezin. 

, "she never saw her husband again after he was moved to Auschwitz in 1944 and many in her extended family and most of the friends she had grown up with were also lost in the Holocaust."


, Herz-Sommer and her son "were among fewer than 20,000 people who were freed when Terezin was liberated by the Soviet army in May 1945. An estimated 140,000 Jews were sent there and 33,430 died there. About 88,000 were transported on to Auschwitz and other death camps, where most were killed."
Still, when 


Film director Malcolm Clark and producer Nick Reed — whose 

The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life

 tells the story of the concerts that Herz-Sommer, a pianist, and others performed in concentration camps to lift the spirits of prisoners — 

, Herz-Sommer was quoted about the role music played in her life:


, after the war Herz-Sommer "went to Israel in 1949 with her sisters and taught music in Tel Aviv before moving to London at the prompting of her son, who had grown up to become a concert cellist but who died suddenly in 2001 while on tour."
In the 2006 interview, she shared with the 

 is due to have more about Herz-Sommer and her life later today. 

Mark Memmott

Author

In 1943, Alice Herz-Sommer and her husband, Leopold Sommer, and their son, Raphael, were sent from Prague to a Nazi camp for Jews in the Czech city of Terezin. According to The Guardian, "she never saw her husband again after he was moved to Auschwitz in 1944."

Oldest-known Holocaust survivor dies; pianist was 110

Go Deeper.

Like this?