Description
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 legitimised.
In 1942, Alice’s mother was deported. Desperately unhappy, she resolved to learn Chopin’s 24 Etudes 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 a hundred concerts she gave her fellow-prisoners hope in a world of pain and death.
Author Information
Melissa Muller is an author and journalist living in Munich. Her collaboration with Traudl Junge, Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Secretary, was translated into more than twenty languages and 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. He has produced a CD of piano works performed by Alice Herz-Sommer, whichcan be ordered directly from him [email protected]
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.