107 year old Alice Herz-Sommer (the oldest Holocaust Survivor)


Dim lights


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.

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Alice: "Music, yes music saved my life"

 As well as being the second oldest person living in London, England - she is more significantly the world's oldest survivor of Hitler's holocaust.

As might be expected Alice is rather unique. Living entirely alone in a tiny council flat in central London she spends hours each day at her piano, practicing beloved Bach and Beethoven, for she was once a renowned and celebrated concert pianist performing to enthusiastic audiences throughout central Europe. But of course, all of that was before… before the 'lights went out all over Europe' and the continent was plunged into years of misery and bitter conflict.