ALICE Herz-Sommer who died last week, aged 110, was the oldest survivor of the Holocaust.
A brilliant musician, she endured tragedy enough for many lifetimes.
Yet, despite that – or maybe because if it – she was wonderfully optimistic and inspiring.
“Life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful,” she said. “Everything we experience is a gift, a present we should cherish and pass on to those we love.”
Even better is what she said to journalist Jane Liddell-King “I have had cancer. I have lost my son. I don’t know what happened to my mother.
I spent three years in Terezin. My husband was killed in Auschwitz.
But why should I die? Have another chocolate.”
Why is it is often that only when people are dead, you realise how much you would have loved to have known them?
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