• Alice Herz-Sommer, oldest Holocaust Survivor, dies at 110
    38 replies, posted
[quote][t]http://i.cbc.ca/1.2548714.1393191057!/cpImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_620/film-oscar-cda-doc-20140117.jpg[/t] Alice Herz-Sommer, believed to be the oldest Holocaust survivor, died at age 110 on Sunday, a family member said. The accomplished pianist's death came just a week before her extraordinary story of surviving two years in a Nazi prison camp through devotion to music is up for an Oscar. London-based Herz-Sommer died in a hospital after being admitted Friday with health problems, daughter-in-law Genevieve Sommer said. "We all came to believe that she would just never die," said Frederic Bohbot, Montreal-based producer of the documentary The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life. "There was no question in my mind: 'would she ever see the Oscars."' The film, directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Malcolm Clarke (also based in Montreal), has been nominated for best short documentary at the Academy Awards next Sunday. Herz-Sommer, her husband and her son were sent from Prague in 1943 to a concentration camp in the Czech city of Terezin — Theresienstadt in German — where inmates were allowed to stage concerts in which she frequently starred. An estimated 140,000 Jews were sent to Terezin and 33,430 died there. About 88,000 were moved on to Auschwitz and other death camps, where most of them were killed. Herz-Sommer and her son, Stephan, were among fewer than 20,000 who were freed when the notorious camp was liberated by the Soviet army in May 1945. [B]'Always laughing'[/B] Yet she remembered herself as "always laughing" during her time in Terezin, where the joy of making music kept them going. "These concerts, the people are sitting there, old people, desolated and ill, and they came to the concerts and this music was for them our food. Music was our food. Through making music we were kept alive," she once recalled. "When we can play it cannot be so terrible." Though she never learned where her mother died after being rounded up, and her husband died of typhus at Dachau, in her old age she expressed little bitterness. "We are all the same," she said. "Good, and bad." Caroline Stoessinger, a New York concert pianist who wrote a book about Herz-Sommer, said she interviewed numerous people who were at the concerts who said "for that hour they were transported back to their homes and they could have hope." "Many people espouse certain credos, but they don't live them. She did," said Stoessinger, author of A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor. "She understood truly that music is a language and she understood how to communicate through this language of music." Herz-Sommer was born on Nov. 26, 1903, in Prague, and started learning the piano from her sister at age 5. As a girl, she met the author Franz Kafka, a friend of her brother-in-law, and delighted in the stories that he told. She also remembered Kafka saying, "In this world to bring up children: in this world?" Alice married Leopold Sommer in 1931. Their son was born in 1937, two years before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia.[/quote] [url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/alice-herz-sommer-oldest-known-holocaust-survivor-dies-1.2548704]CBA News[/url] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oxO3M6rAPw[/media]
It's sad she's gone, but you gotta be happy with over a century to live.
Oh wow, her piano playing was really great. Sad to hear about this.
That's a hell of an age to live to, particularly apparently without big health or mental problems due to age too.
I met one of the survivors when I was going to school in Utah. She is an incredible woman. All of the people who went through this and survived are truly incredible. I'm sad that in the not too distant future, there will be nobody alive to remember first-hand what atrocities were committed, in order to continue to warn the future generations how evil mankind can be, and how important it is to avoid it.
It really does go to show how much music plays such a big role in our life and without it, we'd be nothing I hope she rest easy, what a life she had and a great age to finish on
Hitler's job is done now. [editline]6 gorillion[/editline] I thought people liked tasteless jokes around here. [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Terrible Joke" - Craptasket))[/highlight]
[QUOTE=maxumym;44040251]Hitler's job is done now.[/QUOTE] Show some respect asshole
[QUOTE=maxumym;44040251]Hitler's job is done now. [editline]6 gorillion[/editline] I thought people liked tasteless jokes around here.[/QUOTE] Potentially brilliant distasteful joke, terrible execution.
[QUOTE=Tasm;44040347]Potentially brilliant distasteful joke, terrible execution.[/QUOTE] No, just a terrible joke altogether.
People like her are a true inspiration, its a shame when we lose people like that especially for the younger people since a bit of past culture dies with them.
[QUOTE=joshuadim;44040366]No, just a terrible joke altogether.[/QUOTE] One of my friend's grandpa was in the Treblinka extermination camp as a young child and frequently makes jokes about mundane things being 'worse than the holocaust'. It's pretty fucking funny now to be honest, but the first time I heard him say it... my jaw dropped. Just because it was a terrible time in history and a terrible event doesn't mean it can't be joked about.
[QUOTE=Tasm;44040347]Potentially brilliant distasteful joke, terrible execution.[/QUOTE] I don't see how it could have had a good execution if I'm honest. Not because it's distasteful, but because I literally can't see any real funny jokes coming from this.
[QUOTE=carcarcargo;44041571]I don't see how it could have had a good execution if I'm honest. Not because it's distasteful, but because I literally can't see any real funny jokes coming from this.[/QUOTE] The nuts who claim that the Holocaust is a lie perpetuated by the Jews and Allies would disagree with that, but then, being nuts, are not really supposed to be taken seriously, unless their nuttiness causes real problems.
I may be being dumb here, but was she the last holocaust survivor? Or just the oldest?
She was older than I am now when WWII started. This woman has seen some shit
I did [I]Nazi[/I] this coming.
[QUOTE=bungholioo;44043788]I did [I]Nazi[/I] this coming.[/QUOTE] oh wow i have never heard this pun before did you come up with it yourself
[QUOTE=bungholioo;44043788]I did [I]Nazi[/I] this coming.[/QUOTE] holy fuck ur a comical genius, ur even better than adam sandler
Holy jesus 110, I would seriously won't want to live that much.
Oy vey !
[QUOTE=Tasm;44040347]Potentially brilliant distasteful joke, terrible execution.[/QUOTE] No, there really was no good execution of that, it was just too tasteless to be funny. The Holocaust isn't funny, I'm sorry.
Is Soleedus a Nazi? He's rated everyone who said anything positive about this woman dumb
[QUOTE=carcarcargo;44045346]Is Soleedus a Nazi? He's rated everyone who said anything positive about this woman dumb[/QUOTE] [IMG]http://facepunch.com/image.php?u=383161&dateline=1380756953[/IMG]
[QUOTE=maxumym;44040251]Hitler's job is done now. [editline]6 gorillion[/editline] I thought people liked tasteless jokes around here. [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Terrible Joke" - Craptasket))[/highlight][/QUOTE] this joke doesn't even make any sense, the oldest living holocaust survivor dying doesn't mean the same thing as the last living holocaust survivor dying
[QUOTE=joshuadim;44040287]Show some respect asshole[/QUOTE] Yet when someone plays the Sonic drowning theme in a thread where a little boy drowned, that's comedy gold. Hypocrisy at its finest.
[QUOTE=CaptainObvious1;44055421]Yet when someone plays the Sonic drowning theme in a thread where a little boy drowned, that's comedy gold. Hypocrisy at its finest.[/QUOTE] Are you certain joshuadim found that funny?
[QUOTE=CaptainObvious1;44055421]Yet when someone plays the Sonic drowning theme in a thread where a little boy drowned, that's comedy gold. Hypocrisy at its finest.[/QUOTE] Im sorry but what in the actual fuck are you talking about? A little boy drowning is NEVER funny.
[QUOTE=joshuadim;44090740]Im sorry but what in the actual fuck are you talking about? A little boy drowning is NEVER funny.[/QUOTE] What sick fuck disagrees with this? Finding a little boy drowning to be funny is not tasteless, it's sociopathic and you are a terrible person for finding it funny.
[QUOTE=slayer64;44091149]What sick fuck disagrees with this? Finding a little boy drowning to be funny is not tasteless, it's sociopathic and you are a terrible person for finding it funny.[/QUOTE] last time i checked that post had 1500 funnies, so i'd say a quite a large part of facepunch disagress with that
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