Passing Encounter

Alice Herz-Sommer: pianist and oldest known Holocaust survivor dies aged 110

Tributes have been paid to Alice Herz-Sommer, a renowned concert pianist who was believed to have been the world's oldest known Holocaust survivor, after she died in London at the age of 110.

She was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague at a time when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and endured the city's ghetto following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. She then spent two years in Theresienstadt (Terezín) concentration camp, where nearly 35,000 prisoners perished.

How strange it is to me that, mere hours after writing about my family, I see this as a headline in the news. She was in Theresienstadt, like Alice and Siegfried. I wonder if they ever met...