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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