# Alice Herz-Sommer



## Boccherini

Many people are very thrilled while watching a 7 years old pianist playing the piano, but what about a 107 years old pianist who considers music to be perhaps the most valuable thing for her; not just _another_ one, but the oldest survivor of the Holocaust, and a very independent and optimist one; someone who played more than 100 concerts inside Theresienstadt Concentration Camp which helped her to preserve her sanity and life, through the music; someone who still plays chamber music in the evenings with her few remaining friends.

_Today she's both the last person alive on the planet who can claim to have been both a close friend of Franz Kafka and to have regularly sat on the knee of her Mother's friend; Gustav Mahler, as a little girl. But what really makes Alice stand out from the pack is her extraordinary optimism and forbearance - her absolute conviction that despite all the terrible things that she witnessed and endured - she still can not and will not bear any trace of enmity or hatred for those who did everything in their power to terminate her existence and that of her family and her People.

-- Quoted from her website​ _
Yesterday (November 26th) was her birthday. I guess it's too late, but there is a notification in her website for those who want to send her birthday wishes.


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