Alice's Piano: The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer Author: Visit Amazon's Melissa Müller Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1250007410 | Format: EPUB
Alice's Piano: The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer Description
Review
“Most moving is the story throughout of her loving bond with her son and how she saved him. No politics, intolerance, or self-righteousness, no talk of revenge, always the rigor and joy of music.”--Booklist (Starred Review)
“A miraculous journey of mother and son for whom music provided strength and nourishment.”--Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
MELISSA MÜLLER is an author and journalist living in Munich. Her collaboration with Traudl Junge became an international bestseller. She is also the author of Anne Frank: The Biography.
REINHARD PIECHOCKI is the author of a number of works of cultural history and a close friend of Alice Herz-Sommer’s for many years.
ALICE HERZ-SOMMER, at 107 years old, is the oldest living Holocaust survivor. She lives in London.
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- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press (March 13, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1250007410
- ISBN-13: 978-1250007414
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
In 1942, The Germans mislead the outside world, especially observers from the International Red Cross, by presenting Theresienstadt concentration camp as a normal town. In an ostensible autonomous environment the Germans allowed the prisoners to organize their own cultural activities. Among the prisoners were hundreds of famous Jewish musicians. In July 1943, Alice Hertz-Sommer, born in 1903 into a Jewish, German-speaking family in Prague, her husband Leopold and son Stephan (later changed to Raphael), age six, were deported to Theresienstadt. Alice was given there a chance to give recitals for a little extra food. This amazing lady was imbued with a strong will to survive and to protect her child. She was enraptured with music and clung to her principles, to be hopeful and focus on the positive.
Melissa Muller and Reinhard Piechocki, the biographers narrate Alice's prodigious talent and feelings in the book ALICE'S PIANO. In Theresienstadt many people were dying of infectious diseases. Bugs, fleas and lice were never defeated, the inmates were defeated. However, when Alice practiced she forgot about the world around her. She played from passion and sheer joy in music; it was her door to paradise. Music has been her source of strength all her life, her safe haven. As the defeat for Germany drew nearer in 1944, most "residents" from Theresienstadt were sent to extermination camps. Alice's husband was among those. After the war, Alice found out that her husband had survived the death-march from Auschwitz to Dachau, but died there of typhus. In May 1945 Theresienstadt was liberated, one out of one hundred inmates survived. It is heartbreaking to realize that among the millions that the Nazis murdered there were so many talented people.
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