On Feb. 24, just a day before German Chancellor Angela Merkel and most of her new cabinet arrived in Israel for a working visit, the oldest Holocaust survivor, Aliza (Alice) Herz-Sommer, died at the age of 110. Born in Prague in 1903, Herz-Sommer met Franz Kafka as a child. After marrying musician Leopold Sommer, she gave birth to a son, Raphael. Then, World War II broke out. The Nazis murdered her mother, Sophie, and she was taken along with her husband and son to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
A gifted musician, Herz-Sommer survived Theresienstadt thanks to her piano performances. Her husband was later sent to Auschwitz and was ultimately murdered in Dachau, where he died of an illness. After the liberation of the camp in 1945 by the Red Army, she emigrated to Israel with her son, establishing a family. It is here in Israel that she spent “the most beautiful forty years of my life,” as she put it, as a piano teacher at the Jerusalem Academy of Music & Dance. She then moved to the United Kingdom to follow the international career of her cellist son. She lost him when he was 64 years old, after a heart attack during a concert tour in Israel. A documentary about her life — “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life” — is nominated for an Oscar this year in the short film category.
