Scroll down for a trailer of the Oscar-nominated documentary about Alice Herz-Sommer, The Lady in Number 6
Earlier this week, Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor, passed away at age 110. On this blog and in the IJN editorial pages, we’ve often commented on how, slowly, there are fewer and fewer survivors every. And how that lack of personal connection changes people’s connection to the Holocaust.
What makes the story of Alice Herz-Sommer a bit unusual is her age. Most survivors who pass away are old, but not this old. It means that Alice Herz-Sommer was a fully-grown woman during the Holocaust. She wasn’t a child, teenager or twenty-something, like many of those fortunate to survive. She was close to forty. Her ideas, talents and skills were fully-formed when the Holocaust struck. When she was imprisoned in Theresienstadt, she was already a practiced concert pianist.
But Alice Herz-Sommer was also daughter, a woman who stayed behind in a Europe going up in flames to care for her elderly mother while the rest of her family escaped to Palestine. And so she landed in Theresienstadt. There, among fellow artist like composer Viktor Ullman, she continued to perform. Music became her lifeblood, and it’s what she credits with saving her life. And more than that; fellow survivors of Theresienstadt credit Alice Herz-Sommer with giving them hope.
Luckily, Alice Herz-Sommer left a legacy in the form of a short documentary, “The Lady in Number 6,” currently nominated for an Academy Award. Her optimism shines through her smile and her purity of heart though her words. “I hate no one,” she told the famed Reform Rabbi Leo Baeck soon after the war. “Hatred only brings more hatred.” On a different occasion she shared her life philosophy: “It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad. When you are nice to others, they are nice to you.”
Amazing that someone who went through what she did, and saw what she saw, continued to maintain a belief in the intrinsic goodness of humanity.
Every year, the number of living Holocaust survivors diminish. Which is why documentaries like The Lady in Number 6 and oral history efforts like the Shoah Project are so vitally important. Every person has a unique story to tell. It’s just a matter of us listening.
