Herz Sommer, Alice

Alice Herz (married to Sommer) and her twin sister Marianna were born in Prague in the family of a merchant Friedrich Herz (1853—?) And his wife Sofia Schulz (1868-1942) ^[4] . She studied the piano with her older sister Irma (1892-1969), and later with Vaclav Stepan and at the German Academy of Music and Theater in Prague near Konrad Anzorg . In 1931, she married entrepreneur Leopold Sommer (1905-1944), who was also an amateur musician. Their only son Rafael Sommer (1937-2001) became a cellist ^[5] .

In July 1943, together with her husband and son, she was interned as a Jew in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt (from where her husband was sent to Auschwitz and died in Dachau ). Her parents were interned earlier and also died ^[6] . After the liberation of Theresienstadt by Soviet troops, Alice Herz-Sommer returned to Prague, and in 1949 settled in Israel , where she taught at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem . Since 1986, she lived in London .

In 2012, Caroline Stoessinger, based on conversations with Alice Herz-Sommer, published A Century of Wisdom: Lessons From the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer - the World's Oldest Living Holocast Survivor, subsequently reprinted in 26 countries . She also became the heroine of Alice's Piano (Melissa Müller, Reinhard Piechocki Ein Garten Eden inmitten der Hölle, in German , 2006) and the documentary The Lady in Number 6 , which won an Oscar in 2014 ^{[7 ] [8]} .

Since 1914, her sister Irma was married to the philosopher and publicist Felix Velch .

Alice Herz-Sommer died on February 23, 2014 at the age of 110 in a hospital in London ^{[9] [10]} .

• Alice Herz-Sommer spielt Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Smetana, Debussy. Records of the 1960s (Chopin) and 1986-1995. AHS Records, 2006 ^[11] .
• Alice Sommer Herz - Everything is a Present. DVD Naxos Deutschland GmbH, 2010.
• Alice Herz-Sommer spielt Schubert. Records of Israeli Radio (1983). AHS Records, 2013 ^[12] .