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.

As noted, one day after the passing away of this remarkable woman, another and no less remarkable German woman landed in Israel — Merkel. The German chancellor arrived at the head of a delegation comprising 16 senior German ministers and deputy ministers. On the menu: meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, opposition leader Isaac Herzog, a gala dinner with Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman and one day of bilateral meetings between the German ministers and their Israeli counterparts. Germany and Israel have fostered an intimate, complex, sensitive and volatile relationship, with history playing the main protagonist. German guilt and conscience have (justifiably) been working overtime. Somehow, the parties have been able to overcome the emotions and the baggage that weighs heavily on the two peoples to create a productive bilateral relationship that will mark its 50th anniversary next year.

There are still some 200,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel, but they are dying at a rate of a few dozen daily. Soon, none will be left. There are still Israeli public figures and politicians who refuse to set foot on German land, buy German-made products or hear the German language. Yet most Israelis regard today’s Germany as an irreplaceable European ally. Though suspicion and baggage remain, Israel is a young nation with complicated problems and many enemies. It cannot afford to ignore Germany’s willingness to lend a hand.