A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor by Caroline Stoessinger, with a Foreword by Vaclav Havel
An inspiring story of resilience and the power of optimism--the true story of pianist Alice Herz-Sommer, the world's oldest living Holocaust survivor.
Now 109 years old, the pianist Alice Herz-Sommer is an eyewitness to the entire last century and the first decade of this one. She has seen it all, surviving the Theresienstadt concentration camp, attending the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, and along the way coming into contact with some of the most fascinating historical figures of our time. As a child in Prague, she spent weekends and holidays in the company of Franz Kafka, and family friends included Gustav Mahler, Sigmund Freud, and Rainer Maria Rilke. When Alice moved to Israel after the war, Golda Meir attended her house concerts, as did Arthur Rubinstein, Leonard Bernstein, and Isaac Stern.
Today Alice lives in London, where she still practices piano for hours every day. "Caroline Stoessinger's celebration of music and life and of the meaning and legacy of Alice Herz-Sommer's remarkable, love-filled journey across the bitter, hate-filled years of twentieth-century madness is lyrical, compelling, and profoundly moving. This is an extraordinary, enchanting, entirely inspiring book--most timely and needed now." --Blanche Wiesen Cook
256 pages. Hardback
