A Garden of Eden in Hell The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer
The Pianist from Terezín
„Live gave me the talent to play the piano and to inspire happiness in people through music; and I am just as grateful that it gave me a love of music. Music makes us humans rich. It is the revelation of the devine. It takes us to paradise.
Since my childhood music has been my real home. It provided me with security when I had to confront my first inner torments and through it I found support, when death robbed me of my loved ones. Its meditative power provided me with the determination to cope first with the fascist and then the communist dictatorships that declared me and others like subhuman.”
Alice Herz-Sommer in her foreword
In the Terezín ghetto, pianist Alice Herz-Sommer gave more than one hundred concerts. Not only did she play Chopin’s 24 Etudes for her fellow prisoners, but also works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Smetana and Debussy – and often Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes and Carnaval cycle.
„Compelling … Alice’s experiences make you marvel at the resilience of the human spirit in the face of the most appalling mental and physical torment.”
Daily Mail
„Eloquent and painful.”
Literary Review