Alice would later give Zdenka piano lessons. Until she was nearly one hundred, Alice would make the trek to Zdenka’s apartment every week by subway, even though Zdenka tried to provide her with transportation. Alice always refused, saying that she preferred the excitement of the underground. And Alice would teach Zdenka with the same care and demand the same high standards as she had with her most professional students. The lessons always ended the Czech way, with coffee and little cakes and poppy-seed strudel. Sometimes, especially in summer, when wild berries were in season, Zdenka would prepare Alice’s much loved palačinke, tiny, wafer-thin pancakes topped with wild strawberries and whipped cream. As they discussed books they were reading or Alice tried to interest Zdenka in her philosophy classes, they were reminded of the days of their youth.
After Rafi died Zdenka’s piano lessons stopped and the coffee meetings were moved to Alice’s apartment. Still, each Sunday, Zdenka spends most of the day with her friend. She brings familiar homemade Czech delicacies, and Alice prepares the tea. Alice relishes those hours spent speaking the Czech of her childhood and catching up on the news. While they do not talk of the war years, Alice loves to hear stories about Zdenka’s father, Arnošt Fantl, and to read his notebooks, which glimmer with practical wisdom. Alice agrees with most of his thoughts. But her favorite words are, “Never try to have too much of anything in life, just what you need and a little more. When you die, all you will take with you is what you have given to other people.” A businessman by profession, he was never too busy to engage with his growing children over dinner every evening at seven. For Alice, Zdenka is a reminder of what she used to call home.
Although Alice no longer ventures outside, she exercises by walking with her friends in the lobby of the building. She never complains. As she learned long ago, “Complaining does not help. It just makes everyone feel bad.” It’s no surprise that friends take their leave from her feeling refreshed and often uplifted.
Anita, Geneviève, Wendy, Edith, Valerie, and Zdenka have become Alice’s surrogate family and caretakers—extending themselves as needed, watching over her, helping her to continue the independent life she knows and loves. And they do not leave empty-handed. Each of the women says over and over how much Alice has given back to her—each has been inspired, each touched in her own way by a fresh dose of Alice’s “yes” to life.
Thankful for her friends, Alice is acutely aware that human contact in all its many forms does indeed keep you human.
CODA
Alice Today
“The life of one that laboureth and is contented shall be made sweet.”
—Ecclesiastes
For the last two or three years Alice had ended her phone calls with me, “Come soon to London,” and a touch of her Czech humor: “You never know if I will be here.” On Thanksgiving 2010, I scrambled to put the obligatory turkey and potatoes into the oven for our annual celebratory dinner before leaving for the airport. It was the first time in my life that I had abandoned my daughter on our favorite holiday. Family and friends arrived as I finished packing. With an admonition to remember to baste the bird, I ran out the door barely in time to catch the afternoon flight. It was scheduled to arrive at 6:15 the next morning, November 26, Alice’s 107th birthday.
• • •
On the morning of her birthday, Alice awoke early to brilliant fall sunlight. The London sky was a shimmering clarity of blue, unusual at that time of year. It reminded her of the light in Kafka’s steel-blue eyes and his ways of understanding how to find the bright side of everything. At 8:30 she began her day earlier than usual, practicing a Bach invention. An hour later she had to stop to attend to preparations for guests who were certain to arrive. No celebration had been planned, no invitations had been issued, and no cake had been ordered, but Alice knew that countless friends, acquaintances, strangers, and family members would be dropping by. As she had nothing else to serve, she arranged on platters all of the chocolates from two boxes that she had received as early birthday gifts. After placing one dish at a time on the tray table in front of her chair, Alice wrapped a colorful scarf around her shoulders and fastened a single strand of small ivory beads around her neck. She unlocked the door to her apartment and propped it open in anticipation.
One of the first to arrive was her elder grandson, David, whose smile matched the mood of the day. David needed to rush off to his office, but Alice was clearly thrilled to see him even for a few minutes. They blew kisses to one another across the room. Alice’s friend Sonia Lovett, with permission from Alice, had discreetly set up a camera to record the special day and brought birthday wishes from her father. A cellist in the famous Amadeus Quartet, Sonia’s father first got to know Alice in London, but his father—also a cellist—had been a close friend of Alice’s in Israel.
By 10:00 A.M., Zdenka had swept in on the arm of a younger man with the longest-stemmed red roses Alice had ever seen, and with blossoms so large that at first Alice thought Zdenka had brought paper flowers. She could not stop talking about them and wanted to know where they were grown. She was also interested in learning more about Zdenka’s friend Tomas Schrecker, who was visiting from Australia. He had been a child on one of the Winton Kinder-transports in 1938 that took Jewish children from Prague to live with foster families in England.
One by one Alice’s friends and acquaintances continued to pour into her tiny apartment. As Zdenka said a hurried goodbye, Christopher Nupen, a film director, and his wife arrived with two young pianists, both foreign students at the Royal Academy. The small room was now overflowing. Conversation was constantly interrupted by the many telephone calls from well-wishers around the world. “Hello,” Alice would answer in English. Then, with her face breaking into a smile as she recognized the voice, Alice would continue in the language of the caller. The morning ended with the students performing duets on Alice’s somewhat out-of-tune piano. In spite of all the attention, Alice said farewell to her visitors so she could quietly eat her lunch, delivered, as usual, from meals on wheels, and then rest.
The afternoon saw another round of guests. Geneviève arrived from Paris, and soon after, Anita stopped by, bringing a present of warm slippers that Alice could step into without bending over, the way she had done with difficulty to tie her sneakers. Talk was intimate and quiet, mostly about music. When it turned to the difficulty of explaining to today’s youth the feeling so many had for great music a half century earlier, Alice was quick to remind them of something Kafka had written: “Our art consists of being dazzled by the Truth.” But Kafka did not really know anything about music, the group agreed. “Yes,” Alice countered, smiling, “but he understood our respect for the music. How often Kafka said, ‘Writing is a kind of prayer.’ Listening to music, playing concerts, even practicing is a kind of prayer.”
The large decorated chocolate cake Sonia managed to find in a nearby bakery was Alice’s favorite, and after successfully blowing out her many candles, Alice ate the first piece. Later in the afternoon Alice greeted another crowd: an elderly couple, survivors, accompanied by their children, who wanted to honor Alice; a composer friend; and Alice’s neighbor Valerie Reuben. As the room was crowded, several people waited patiently outside in the hall for a chance to speak to Alice. Jacqueline Danson had driven more than one hundred kilometers from her home in Hampshire to bring her mother, Ruth, to see Alice. Later Jackie would comment that Alice’s “unsullied sweetness” was as heartening as ever. Since her earliest childhood, Ruth Boronow Danson has known and loved Alice. Like Anita, she had grown up in Breslau, where her mother, Kaethe, was a piano teacher. Ruth’s father, the late Dr. Ernst Boronow, a well-known dentist and intellectual, sponsored Alice’s concerts there. Through his profound love of music Ernst became one of Alice’s closest friends. Arrested on Kristallnacht, he was imprisoned in Buchenwald for a short time and released. Dr. Boronow lost no time fleeing to England in March 1939 with his family. Alice reconnected with Ernst and his children when she visited London in the 1960s.
Ruth clearly remembers being taken to Alice’s Breslau concert in 1927. Jackie said that when her “Opa” (grandfather) was listening to Alice practice or even to a phonograph recording or radio broadcast, “entering the room felt like walking into a synagogue or church.”
At a quarter after four, the Czech ambassador to Britain, Michael Žantovský, arrived with his wife and an enormous, elegant arrangement of pink and white flowers. The ambassador tried to make a formal presentation, but Alice repeatedly interrupted him. In a decidedly Alice moment, full of mischief and humor, she said that she was more interested in understanding how genes work than in getting awards. Žantovský then tried using musical terms to describe how two genes might accidentally meet, intertwine, and finally end their game by becoming one entirely new melody, and he began his speech anew: “As the permanent representative of the Czech Republic, I have come today on behalf of my government to—” only to be interrupted again by Alice, who was unsatisfied with his layman’s explanation. “Doesn’t anyone in this room understand genes? I know that when my husband and I made a baby, that child inherited our musical talents through our genes. But how? I want to know how genes work and why they sometimes don’t work.”
“Alice,” Ambassador Žantovský said, stroking the back of her hand, “please let me make my presentation, and I promise that I will bring a great Czech geneticist to visit you who can answer all of your questions. Now can I present the award?” Incorrigible, Alice looked at the ambassador and asked, “Who made you do this?” Always the consummate diplomat, he answered, “Alice, this award is a gift to you from my government. Now please do not interrupt, let me make my presentation so that I will not lose my job.” Both of them laughed, and Alice finally allowed the ambassador to deliver his brief speech before the small group of friends standing in the little room.
The award was the Czech Ministry of Culture’s 2010 Artis Bohemiae Amicis medal for promotion of Czech culture abroad. In his speech Ambassador Žantovský mentioned that his grandmother had also been a prisoner in Theresienstadt and that just maybe she had heard Alice’s concerts in the camp. He also explained that before being posted to London he had served as the Czech ambassador to Israel. At last he opened the box containing an impressive brass plaque engraved with a citation to Alice.
Once again the candles were lit and everyone sang “Happy Birthday” in a cacophony of Czech, Hebrew, German, and English. Alice was beginning to tire from the day’s excitement.
The experience of the Holocaust has affected each survivor and family differently. Elie Wiesel has spent his life thinking about the total madness he witnessed day in, day out, the evil that destroyed his family and millions of the Jewish people. He has argued with God and concluded, “God is the silence of God.” Alice agrees with Wiesel, and with Einstein, who said that he believed in “Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.” Alice talks of the end of her life and the realization that she, as well as all of us, is a minuscule particle in the infinity of God or what we call the universe. Alice is confident when she says, “I have lived in music, I will die in music,” which is her mortal way of connecting to infinity.
Alice is able to leave the past behind; she draws her strength from living in the present. After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, when the Communist government of Czechoslovakia was overthrown and Václav Havel became the country’s first free president, unrestricted travel became possible there. The former prisoners of Theresienstadt began to organize and hold memorial ceremonies in the camp. Year after year, hundreds of survivors would gather for reunions in Theresienstadt; performances of Brundibár and Verdi’s Requiem were reconstructed in the old horse stadium. Alice has never attended. She has never wanted to return to the country of her birth. The Czechs have yet to restore her citizenship. Her passport reflects her Israeli citizenship, and she holds permanent residency in Great Britain. This is Alice’s present.
Still, the award from the Czech ministry has meaning for her and elicits beautiful memories of “the way it was.” How proud her mother would have been of the government’s formal recognition of her daughter.
Alice came into my life at a time when I needed her inspiration and was most open to learning from her. My vision was not what it used to be. The brightest day looked hazy. And then I bumped into an accidental miracle, or at least the event had a miraculous effect on me. I was making a documentary about Alice, who at the time was only 103. We had spent the majority of the afternoon filming, and later in a restaurant I could not find my glasses to read the menu. Assuming they had fallen off my head in Alice’s tiny apartment, I asked a young assistant, Sean, to retrieve them. Returning empty-handed, Sean reported that the glasses were nowhere to be found and that I must have lost them elsewhere.
Alice was waiting at the door when I arrived to interview her the next day. Smiling broadly, she said, “I found your glasses this morning.” As she handed them to me, she mentioned that she had also found one of the lenses, which had fallen out.
I could hardly believe that Alice’s ancient eyes were far more acute than mine or even Sean’s. I realized then that this was not about just a pair of glasses and the ability to see well or even to see at all.
Alice’s vision has enabled me to face the greatest test of my life, the illness of my only child. It was a shock that has forced me to face the limits of existence and to find strength and calmness in Alice’s example. Her ability to accept reality, not to allow anger or frustration to dominate even a few moments of her time, to garner the courage to trust her own instincts rather than depend on the approval of others, and to hold fast to hope continue to work inside me. And yes, there is Alice’s laughter, effervescent laughter every day. Long before modern-day explorations of the healing possibilities of laughter, Alice understood the immense health benefits that laughing induces, how when we laugh the body takes in more oxygen. Her laughter is a blessing that has made me, and so many others, feel better; her influence has led me to a more peaceful life, clearer vision, and contentment and gratitude for life itself.
The morning after the birthday celebration when I stop in, Alice is standing in front of her windowsill, which is lined with a few small plants—gifts from strangers. As she gazes outward, she catches glimpses of the late fall colors and the eternally green ivy, bits of the natural world that are so much a part of her. “Look, how beautiful. Nature,” she tells me. Quoting her own translation of Spinoza, Alice says, “We are nature. God is nature.” She pauses to reflect. “Impossible to believe, I am one hundred and seven years old. You know that I am very independent and have the freedom to think for myself. I am so happy that I woke up today.”
As I write this, Alice Herz-Sommer has just celebrated her 108th birthday. She continues to practice and polish her repertoire with miraculous concentration, always searching for that elusive perfection. One of her visitors recently asked her why she still spends so much time practicing the same pieces. Folding her arms, she looked him straight in the face. “I am an artist. Some days I admire myself. Not bad, I think. But the longer I work, the more I learn that I am only a beginner. No matter how well I know a work of Beethoven, for example, I can always go deeper, and then deeper still. One of the rewards of being a musician is that it is possible to practice the same piece of music and discover new meaning without boredom for at least a hundred years. I study the language of music with the same fervor that scholars reexamine the holy scriptures. The artist’s job is never done. It is the same with life. We can only strive towards rightness. As with music, I search for meaning. I practice life.”
Stefan Zweig marveled that, during the first half of the twentieth century, man realized the impossible of yesterday: conquest of the air, radio transmission of the human word, the splitting of the atom, the curing of the most hideous diseases. He wrote, “Not until our time has mankind as a whole behaved so infernally, and never before has i
t accomplished so much that is godlike.” Zweig continued, “Our greatest debt of gratitude is to those who in these inhuman times confirm the human in us.” As a witness to the twentieth century, Alice has lived through the extraordinary cultural and scientific accomplishments Zweig chronicled; she experienced the highest rewards civilization has to offer—the power of music, literature, art, technological innovation, science, and philosophy to bring out the best in our humanity—and she survived the greatest degradation of the human spirit the Western world has known. And yet, in immersing herself in art while remaining closely connected to the world around her, to her music, and to what Kafka called that something “indestructible” deep within her being, Alice has found lasting happiness—which for all of us may be the ultimate source of eternal youth.
IN ALICE’S WORDS
I am so old because I use my brain constantly. The brain is the body’s best medicine.
Only when we are old do we realize the beauty of life.
Gratitude is essential for happiness.
A sense of humor keeps us balanced in all circumstances, even death.
Complaining does not help. It only makes everyone feel bad.
Laughter is wonderful. It makes you and everyone else feel happy.
Love to work. When you love your work you are never bored. Boredom is unhealthy.
When we love our work, we can enjoy a sense of achievement, every small achievement.
Generosity above all.
School is important, but what children learn in the atmosphere of their homes lasts for life. The beautiful, intellectual, and musical atmosphere of my childhood has sustained me until today.
A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor Page 15