Fair play to Alice!

The Mail reports the following:

World's oldest known holocaust survivor dies aged 110: Alice, who played piano in concentration camp, appeared in Oscar-nominated short film about her life

Alice Herz-Sommer was confined in the camp in Terezin, or Theresienstadt
Film about her life is up for best short documentary at Academy Awards
She died in a hospital Sunday morning after being admitted on Friday

By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED: 19:39, 23 February 2014 | UPDATED: 22:24, 23 February 2014

The world's oldest known Holocaust survivor has died aged 110.
Alice Herz-Sommer, who lived in London and was originally from Prague, survived two years in the Nazi camp in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, in Germany during the Second World War. (Come on now, was it Terezin or was it Theresienstadt? Make up your mind DM)
Ms Herz-Sommer was a talented musician and an adept pianist and a film about her life is nominated for an Academy Award.

Alice Herz-Sommer, the world's oldest known Holocaust survivor has died aged 110, her family have said

Ms Herz-Sommer,pictured with Caroline Stoessinger who compiled Herz-Sommers' memories in a book, A Century of Wisdom. Born in 1903 Prague to a family of Jewish intellectuals and musicians, Alice Herz-Sommer socialised with the likes of Kafka and Brod

She is said to have counted esteemed existentialist writer Franz Kafka among her family friends (Who said?) and, more recently, was the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary about her life.
The Lady In Number 6 (That number again): Music Saved My Life, (Wasn't 'the Allies' then?) a 38-minute film, is up for best short documentary at the Academy Awards to be handed out next weekend.
Her grandson, Ariel Sommer, said tonight: 'Alice Sommer passed away peacefully this morning with her family by her bedside.

'Much has been written about her (Where?), but to those of us who knew her best, she was our dear 'Gigi'.

'She loved us, laughed with us, and cherished music with us.
'She was an inspiration and our world will be significantly poorer without her by our side. We mourn her loss and ask for privacy in this very difficult moment (What you talking to the papers for then if you want privacy?).'
Ms Herz-Sommer's devotion to the piano and to her son sustained her through two years in the Nazi prison camp (Not Death or Concentration?), and a film about her has been nominated for best short documentary at next week's Academy Awards (Yeh, you mentioned that a few lines back-Geez!).
She died in a hospital Sunday morning after being admitted on Friday, daughter-in-law Genevieve Sommer said.

Ms Herz-Sommer, who lived in London and was originally from Prague, had been confined in the camp in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, in Germany during the Second World War

The Lady In Number 6: Music Saved My Life, a 38-minute film, is up for best short documentary at the Academy Awards to be handed out next weekend (That again?)

Ms Herz-Sommer's devotion to the piano and to her son sustained her through two years in the Nazi prison camp

'We all came to believe that she would just never die,' said Frederic Bohbot, producer of the documentary 'The Lady in Number 6 (and again): Music Saved My Life.' 'There was no question in my mind, "would she ever see the Oscars." (Schindler?)'
An accomplished pianist, Ms Herz-Sommer, her husband and her son were sent from Prague in 1943 to a concentration camp in the Czech city of Terezin — Theresienstadt in German (Ahh, it's the same place, but spelt different, I get it now) — where inmates were allowed to stage concerts in which she frequently starred. (Oh thank goodness, for a moment there I thought that read 'starved')
An estimated 140,000 Jews were sent to Terezin and 33,430 died there.(List of names - official causes of deaths?)
About 88,000 were moved on to Auschwitz and other death camps, where most of them were killed.
Ms Herz-Sommer and her son, Stephan, were among fewer than 20,000 who were freed when the notorious camp was liberated by the Soviet army in May 1945.
Yet she remembered herself as 'always laughing' during her time in Terezin, (Interesting that, a lot of Survivors have stated they were treated OK in the 'Death Camps' but of course they are never published in the MSM are they?) where the joy of making music kept them going.
'These concerts, the people are sitting there, old people, desolated and ill (From Typhus maybe among other illnesses?), and they came to the concerts and this music was for them our food. Music was our food. Through making music we were kept alive,' she once recalled.
'When we can play it cannot be so terrible.' (I like honesty)

Ms Herz-Sommer was born on November 26, 1903, in Prague, and started learning the piano from her sister at age 5

Though she never learned where her mother died after being rounded up (Probably in Israel), and her husband died of typhus at Dachau, in her old age she expressed little bitterness.
'We are all the same,' she said. 'Good, and bad.'
Ms Herz-Sommer was born on November 26, 1903, in Prague, and started learning the piano from her sister at age 5.
As a girl, she met the author Franz Kafka, a friend of her brother-in-law, and delighted in the stories that he told. (Yeh you mentioned that already)
She also remembered Kafka saying, 'In this world to bring up children: in this world?'
Alice married Leopold Sommer in 1931. Their son was born in 1937, two years before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia.
'This was especially for Jews a very, very hard time. I didn't mind, because I enjoyed to be a mother and I was full of enthusiasm about being a mother, so I didn't mind so much,' she said (In the face of adversity).
Jews were allowed to shop for only half an hour in the afternoon, by which time the shops were empty. (Was it Siesta time, or do you mean there was no stock left?) Most Jewish families were forced to leave their family apartments and were crammed into one apartment with other families, but her family was allowed to keep its home. (Its home?!, not there home?)

(Nice 'Fresh' painted sign their, all adds to the effect I suppose)
((Won't be long before Ian Dunkedin Shmidt adopts that as a new corporate tag line for JobCentre buildings))

An accomplished pianist, Ms Herz-Sommer, her husband and her son were sent from Prague in 1943 to a concentration camp in the Czech city of Terezin - Theresienstadt in German - where inmates were allowed to stage concerts in which she frequently starred

'We were poor, and we knew that they will send us away, and we knew already in this time that it was our end,' she said. (Given Alice survived I think this statement is a little silly, after all she didn't in fact know, but may have believed it at the time)

In 1942, her 73-year-old mother (Who did well giving birth to a child in 1904 when she was in her late 30's) was transported to Terezin, then a few months later to Treblinka, an extermination camp. (Missed that one-extermination)
'And I went with her of course till the last moment. This was the lowest point in my life. She was sent away. Till now I don't know where she was, till now I don't know when she died, nothing.
'When I went home from bringing her to this place I remember I had to stop in the middle of the street and I listened to a voice, an inner voice: "Now, nobody can help you, not your husband, not your little child, not the doctor."'
From then on, she took refuge in the 24 Etudes of Frederic Chopin, a dauntingly difficult monument of the repertoire. She labored at them for up to eight hours a day.
She recalled an awkward conversation on the night before her departure to the concentration camp (Hold on did I miss something, it was a 'Nazi Camp' earlier) with a Nazi who lived upstairs and called to say that he would miss her playing. (Vicious b'stards them Nazi's - he was probably taking the piss)
She remembered him saying: 'I hope you will come back. What I want to tell you is that I admire you, your playing, hours and hours, the patience and the beauty of the music.' (Then duly turned round, clicked his heels like Dorothy and shouted 'untermention' or some ol bol*ocks like that)
Other neighbours, she said, stopped by only to take whatever the family wasn't able to bring to the camp. (Her neighbours robbed them?)
'So the Nazi was a human, the only human. The Nazi, he thanked me,' she said.
The camp's artistic side was a blessing; young Stephan, then 6, was recruited to play a sparrow in an opera. ("I'm only a poor little sparrow"-sing along ya tight gits)

Alice married Leopold Sommer in 1931. Their son was born in 1937, two years before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia

'My boy was full of enthusiasm,' she recalled. 'I was so happy because I knew my little boy was happy there.' (Huh!! Happy in an Extermination Camp?)
The opera was 'Brundibar,' a 40-minute piece for children composed by Hans Krasa, a Czech who was also imprisoned in the camp. It was first performed in Prague but got only one other performance before he was interned.
'Brundibar' became a showpiece for the camp, performed at least 55 times including once when Terezin, which had been extensively spruced up for the occasion, was inspected by a Red Cross delegation in June 1944. (Yehh, we all know about those Anti Semitic 'Red Cross' don't we, figure fiddlers!!)
The opera featured in a 1944 propaganda film which shows more than 40 young performers filling the small stage during the finale.
Herz-Sommer's life inspired two books: 'A Garden of Eden in Hell' (2006) by Melissa Mueller and Reinhard Piechocki, and 'A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor' (Will that require re-titling now?) (2012) by Caroline Stoessinger.
In 1949, she left Czechoslovakia to join her twin sister Mizzi in Jerusalem. She taught at the Jerusalem Conservatory until 1986, when she moved to London.
Her son, who changed his first name to Raphael after the war (A lot of that happening 'allegedly', after the war), made a career as a concert cellist. He died in 2001.
Funeral arrangements weren't immediately available. (Hope she doesn't decide to 'do a Mandela' for the Oscars)

Have a "Proper-Gander"

Tuesday 25 February 2014

Sunday 23 February 2014

Fair play to Alice!

The Mail reports the following:

World's oldest known holocaust survivor dies aged 110: Alice, who played piano in concentration camp, appeared in Oscar-nominated short film about her life

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