A Garden of Eden in Hell: The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer
Note: If you encounter any issues while opening the Download PDF button, please utilize the online read button to access the complete book page.
| Size | 21 MB (21,080 KB) |
|---|---|
| Format | |
| Downloaded | 584 times |
| Status | Available |
| Last checked | 8 Hour ago! |
| Author | Melissa Müller |
“Book Descriptions: Alice Herz-Sommer was born in 1903 in Prague, the Prague of the Hapsburgs and of Franz Kafka, a family friend. Musically very gifted, by her mid-teens Alice was one of the best-known pianists in Prague. But as the Nazis swept across Europe her comfortable, bourgeois world began to crumble around her, as anti-Jewish feeling not only intensified but was legitimised. In 1942, Alices mother was deported. Desperately unhappy, she resolved to learn Chopins 24 Etudesthe most technically demanding piano pieces she knewand the complex but beautiful music saved her sanity. A year later, she, tootogether with her husband and their six-year-old sonwas deported to a concentration camp. But even in Theresienstadt, music was her salvation and in the course of more than a hundred concerts she gave her fellow-prisoners hope in a world of pain and death. This is her remarkable story, but it is also the story of a mothers struggle to create a happy childhood for her beloved only son in the midst of atrocity and barbarism. Of fifteen thousand children sent to the camp, Raphael was one of the 130 who survived. Today, Alice Herz-Sommer lives in London and she still plays the piano every day.”
