A Garden of Eden in Hell: True Story of a 108 year old Survivor of Concentration Camp Feb 16, 2012
A Garden of Eden in Hell: The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer
by Melissa Muller, Reinhard Piechocki
(Video interview with her at the end)
Alice Herz-Sommer was born in 1903 in Prague–the Prague of the Hapsburgs and of Franz Kafka, a family friend.
Musically very gifted, by her mid-teens Alice was one of the best-known pianists in Prague. But as the Nazis swept across Europe her comfortable, bourgeois world began to crumble around her, as anti-Jewish feeling not only intensified but was legitimized.
In 1942, Alice's mother was deported. Desperately unhappy, she resolved to learn Chopin's 24 Etudes–the most technically demanding piano pieces she knew–and the complex but beautiful music saved her sanity.
A year later, she, too–together with her husband and their six-year-old son–was deported to a concentration camp. But even in Theresienstadt, music was her salvation and in the course of more than 100 concerts she gave her fellow prisoners hope in a world of pain and death.
This is her remarkable story, but it is also the story of a mother's struggle to create a happy childhood for her beloved only son in the midst of atrocity and barbarism.
Of 15,000 children sent to the camp, Raphael was one of the 130 who survived. Today, Alice Herz-Sommer lives in London and she still plays the piano every day.
If you buy this book from my site, I make enough for a latte…which I will probably spend on green tea: http://joyenergyandhealth.com/
"Smiling helps a lot."
"Hatred eats the soul of the hater not the hated."
"I know about the bad, but I look for the good things."
At 108 years old Alice Herz Sommer lives by herself in a tiny London flat without assistance. She practices piano three hours a day.
Lessons in joy, health and longevity from a true wise elder.
Tony Robbins interviews her:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTwnlW5lscg
You can get the book here: http://joyenergyandhealth.com/
