Wednesday, February 26, 2014

The secret of long life - Alice Herz-Sommer

Extract:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/24/oldest-holocaust-survivor-dies-aged-110
Alice Herz-Sommer: 'Everything we experience is a gift we should pass on to those we love'
Oldest known survivor of the Holocaust, who has died aged 110, is the subject of Oscar-nominated film The Lady in Number 6

“Hatred breeds only hatred.” 

“Hatred eats the soul of the hater, not the hated.” 

Look for beauty of life.

I see beauty in life everywhere.

“When you are optimistic, when you are not complaining, when you look at the good side of your life, everybody loves you.” 

After regaining her freedom, she went to Israel in 1949 and taught music. The later half of her life was spent in a London flat.
As for how and why she survived when so many did not, Herz-Sommer had this to say:
"My temperament. This optimism and this discipline. Punctually, at 10 a.m., I am sitting there at the piano, with everything in order around me. For 30 years I have eaten the same, fish or chicken. Good soup, and this is all. I don't drink, not tea, not coffee, not alcohol. Only hot water. I walked and swam a lot." 
Interviewed for the film – in which one of her neighbours describes the bliss of sharing the block of flats in north London and hearing classical music beautifully played every morning and afternoon – Herz-Sommer described her life as full of joy. "I think I am in my last days but it doesn't really matter because I have had such a beautiful life. And life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful. Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love."


In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when she was 106, she was full of joy and gratitude: "What I have learned, at my advanced age, is to be grateful that we have a nice life. There is electricity, cars, telegraph, telephone, internet. We also have hot water all day long. We live like kings. I even got used to the bad weather in London."






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