Alice's Piano Read online

  In memory of Raphael Sommer

  Contents

  FRONTISPIECE

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  FOREWORD by Alice Herz-Sommer

  “THE STORY OF A MIRACLE” by Raphael Sommer

  1. Twins

  2. Roots

  3. World War

  4. Music

  5. Marriage

  6. Occupation

  7. Theresienstadt

  8. Happiness

  9. The Gates of Hell

  10. Inferno

  11. After the Inferno

  12. Liberation

  13. Homecoming

  14. Prague

  15. Zena

  16. Jerusalem

  EPILOGUE: “Music takes us to paradise”

  THE RAPHAEL SOMMER MUSIC SCHOLARSHIP

  NOTES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX

  PHOTOGRAPHS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  COPYRIGHT

  Foreword

  BY ALICE HERZ-SOMMER

  “Practice the Chopin Études, they will save you.”

  Life 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 divine. It takes us to paradise. I feel blessed that this book has been opening the door to “my paradise” to so many readers all over the world.

  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 me subhuman.

  When, in the early summer of 1942, my seventy-two-year-old mother was issued with a deportation order and I had to go with her to the assembly point and say goodbye to her for the last time, I was out of my mind. How was it possible to tear an old lady away from her world with nothing more than a rucksack on her back and send her to a concentration camp? Even to this day I can clearly hear the inner voice that spoke to me: “Practice the Chopin Études, they will save you.”

  Although Chopin’s Études are among the most difficult pieces ever written for the repertoire, I began to learn them immediately. They were my refuge but they made huge demands on my discipline and strength of will, which I had not experienced before. In my despair I had chosen an ambitious project, but they provided me with hours of freedom in a world which was collapsing about me.

  Every day for a year, I knuckled down to this seemingly insuperable task and mastered all twenty-four of them before I myself, my husband and our then six-year-old son were also deported to Theresienstadt. There I gave more than a hundred concerts for my fellow prisoners, and at more than twenty of them I played the Études.

  Music gave heart to many of the prisoners, if only temporarily. In retrospect I am certain that it was music that strengthened my innate optimism and saved my life and that of my son. It was our food; and it protected us from hate and literally nourished our souls. There in the darkest corners of the world it removed our fears and reminded us of the beauty around us. Music supported me as I turned my back on my home town of Prague for the last time and had to think of learning new languages, and I am thankful for it too, at my great age, when I spend many hours alone. It hardly matters where I am: I am not prone to loneliness. Although I no longer travel anymore, through music I can see the world.

  Music has been a great friend to me. Even today I receive visits almost every day. Many friends come regularly and every Saturday afternoon I receive a call from Zdenka Fantlová, who was in Theresienstadt at the same time as I was. And every Sunday afternoon at around five the cellist Anita Lasker-Walfisch pays a call; she only survived Auschwitz because she played in a girls’ orchestra for Josef Mengele and the SS. Above all I thank music for the privilege, even today, at the age of 108, for the ability to speak to and laugh with people all over the world. That makes me happy. Though I no longer have the power to answer every reader’s letter, to reply to every phone call with the same endurance, and to receive every new visitor personally as I used to, I am deeply grateful for the attention and the comity of so many people.

  A few years ago the love of music brought me into contact with Reinhard Piechocki, himself a great music-lover. He rang me from his home on the island of Rügen and asked me a question no one had asked me since my liberation from Theresienstadt: where had I found the strength and inspiration to perform Frédéric Chopin’s uncommonly difficult 24 Études in the concentration camp? I told him that playing them was—albeit transitory—liberation. He visited me in London soon afterward and it was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. We became close, we laughed together, and since then we talk almost daily on the telephone. We don’t just talk about music; we talk about God, philosophy and the world.

  When he suggested writing a book about my life, I immediately said no thank you. My life has been marked by its highs and lows like other people but to have a life that is longer than most people’s is, I feel, both a test and a gift. Becoming old is a difficult business but in my heart I am happier today than I was when I was young. Young people expect great things from life. As an old person one is very often aware, however, of what is worthwhile, and what one can do without. “Humor is the path to good sense. It helps you understand the nonsense of the past with a smile on your face, and that liberates you,” wrote my brother-in-law, the philosopher Felix Weltsch, about the humor of his close friend Franz Kafka. “It is an antibiotic against hatred.” I agree with Weltsch and Kafka that humor is always self-critical. When Kafka was with us children he, too, was like a boisterous child and told fabulous stories.

  Reinhard Piechocki finally managed to convince me to agree to this book, because it was to be a book about the power of music and love, a book about a person for whom others were more important than she was to herself. As it came together two other people played important roles: Reinhard’s wife Katrin Eigenfeld and Melissa Müller. I found an affinity with Katrin, who has fed entire drafts of chapters into her computer, not only because of her modesty but also for the courage with which she fought the consequences of Stalinism in East Germany. The author Melissa Müller, who co-wrote this book with Reinhard, inspired me from the first because of her feeling for language and her clever and intuitive way of asking questions.

  In the meantime, this book and several documentaries made me known as the “oldest Holocaust survivor alive.” People tend to love this kind of superlative. I think nothing of it. But I enjoy life as it is. People are often breathlessly pursuing their next goal in life without looking around them. They become attached to material things, and—to quote Felix Weltsch once again—are incapable of circumspection or far-sightedness, because they lack the necessary material detachment. Detachment from possessions also creates detachment in oneself, and teaches us the modesty that makes it a pleasure for us humans to live and work together. In my opinion people take themselves too seriously as a rule. Culture and politics both suffer from this, so does humanity. Modesty brings happiness. Is that not so? Whoever is ready to understand this should absorb the greatness and dignity of a work by Beethoven or Bach. I have never learned to give up hope.

  London, Summer 2011

  “The Story of a Miracle”

  BY RAPHAEL SOMMER

  This is a true story. I can swear to that because I lived it myself. Even in the darkest days of the twentieth century miracles occurred. In the middle of hell, my mother created a Garden of Eden for me. She built a strong wall around me out of love and gave me such security that I could not find anything extraordinary in our lives, and i
n retrospect I can say with good conscience that my childhood was wonderfully happy. How my mother managed it I cannot say. She says it was the obvious thing to do. For me it remains a miracle.

  My mother has a gift which, I believe, is given above all to Jewish and central and eastern European women. Without any self-pity they make their own requirements secondary to those of their families. I lived under the protecting veil of my mother and so cannot describe the darker side of our lives in the concentration camp. I was a child and I understood events as they seemed to me; I naturally believed everything my mother told me. Not once did she allow me to see the humiliations and insults she had to suffer. With inner strength and inexhaustible reserves of love she concentrated on just that: me, her beloved son and the creation of a joyful and “normal” environment around me that had little to do with the reality in which we lived. With her attentive care my mother managed to shift the terror away from my gaze and provide me with the most valuable of gifts—a happy childhood. That this was possible behind the wire of a National Socialist concentration camp must, in all truth, be called a miracle.

  In Theresienstadt I shared a bunk with my mother. I was so close to her that I never actually felt frightened. During the day, when my mother had to work in the factory, I played in the kindergarten. I was so little aware that our lives were in any way unnatural that I also have no recollection of our concern when my father, together with 3,000 other men, was sent away and never returned.

  A single trauma lodged itself like a splinter in my heart and is still there, and to this day the scar is not fully healed: my mother was forced to work. I screamed, I dropped my guard and my fever raged. My mother and I clung to one another and we went from one building to the next to find someone who was prepared to look after me. The nagging uncertainty that took hold of me on that day I shall never forget. Children’s worries are abiding worries and, although I got my courage back after my mother had told me that she was only going to be transferred from the factory to the laundry, my childish trust was temporarily shaken. For all that my early childhood, which for all those close to me seemed to be horror and nightmare, seemed to me happy and utterly normal. For this I thank my mother—she performed miracles.

  Raphael Sommer died in 2001. He wrote this account a few years before his death.

  ONE

  Twins

  “One happy, one sad…”

  FRANTA CAME out of his employer’s office with a delivery note in his hand. A consignment of pharmaceutical scales had to be taken to the station that afternoon and put on a train for Vienna. On the way to the stables the servant paused to listen to the music coming from the drawing room of the flat in the courtyard. As she so often did after lunch, the heavily pregnant Sofie Herz was playing the piano.

  Franta sat on a bench in the courtyard and looked up to the windows above. For nearly thirty years he had been employed by Herz Brothers. How many thousand times had he loaded the carriage since then, how often had he harnessed the horses and taken the consignment over the Moldau to the station? It was a part of his routine on that gray Prague morning in November 1903, like any other.

  Sofie Herz was a precise interpreter of Bach. The little preludes and two-part inventions were among her favorites. In the last weeks of her confinement, however, she had often played Chopin, his poetic nocturnes and above all his sad waltzes. The melancholy melody reminded Franta of his master’s marriage in 1886. The factory director Friedrich Herz was thirty-four then, almost twice the age of his bride, Sofie.

  For nights on end Sofie cried herself to sleep. Barred from marrying the man to whom she had given her heart, she dreaded her wedding day. She had fallen in love with a student her own age, who shared her love of music and literature. Finally Sofie bowed to her parents’ will. Ignatz and Fanny Schulz were prominent merchants in Iglau and now a good match needed to be found for her. According to the Ashkenazi tradition a schadchen or marriage broker had to be entrusted with the business of finding the right man. Means and possessions, social class and position, knowledge and wisdom were the basis of a reasonable marriage among schejnen leit (the right sort of people), the wealthy. It was also assumed that love would blossom soon after the wedding. Consoling her daughter, Fanny told her, “Look at those miserable people who apparently wed for love; they are fickle and their marriages frequently end up in divorce. That is the proof.”

  The broker found his man 150 kilometers away from Iglau. Friedrich Herz lived in Prague, he was a well-built, good-looking man who understood responsibility. He was decent, warm-hearted, and had accumulated a modest wealth through his own industry. He was one of the most important producers of precision scales in the Habsburg Empire, from devices for goldsmiths and pharmacists to industrial scales to carry heavy weights. The only thing that the “director”—as those around him respectfully addressed him—lacked now to complete his happiness was a family. He was pleased with Sofie Schulz.

  Sofie’s contrariness was clear from the start—together with her indifference to the Jewish tradition in which she had grown up. At their wedding Sofie would not listen to the badchen, the entertainer that the bridegroom and wedding guests praised and laughed with until everyone was crying their eyes out, or the Kletzmermusik. She was deaf to the proceedings and let them pass her by, as Franta now recalled. She maintained a proud and upright posture as she was solemnly enthroned in her second chair and covered with a veil. Her delicate fingers clutched the bridal stool while a cousin declaimed the rights and duties of a married woman. She looked lovely in her white lace, coldly lovely.

  All eyes were on Sofie as she was led forward by her retinue under her chupe—a canopy of shining gold brocade—and handed over to her future husband, the first blessing of the rabbi and the first sip of wine: “With this ring you are sanctified by the religion of Moses and Israel,” Friedrich said as he placed the ring on her hand. She scarcely looked at her husband. Even the next seven blessings left her unaffected. The wedding guests waited in vain for the tears which would give some indication of Sofie’s emotions—all part and parcel of ancient tradition.

  Another sip of wine, then the groom crushed the glass chalice underfoot to cries of “matzeltow” from the guests. Splinters bring you luck, supposedly, even when the custom recalls the expulsion of the Jews and should symbolize the smashing of their joy through banishment. Sofie looked at the smashed goblet and could only see her happiness destroyed by the man to whom she was now wed.

  Franta was stirred by Sofie’s playing and respected her. She was a no-nonsense woman who spoke her mind. Sofie always had a kind word for him, perhaps because he was kind to her children, perhaps because he was the only one who recognized that behind her apparently tough facade, she knew what true beauty was. There might even have been a tacit understanding between the two of them that Franta could relax for a few minutes after his midday break and sit down on the bench in the courtyard to listen to Sofie’s playing before getting back to his job.

  All of a sudden there was a smell of burning. “Fire! Fire!” shouted Franta.

  Franta’s cry shattered Sofie’s concentration. She was expecting her fourth child any day. She lurched toward the window from the piano. Flames were shooting out of one of the factory buildings. Workers were rushing in all directions and gathering before the burning workshop. No one dared go in.

  Friedrich Herz got up from his short siesta on the sofa when he heard cries for help. His days were as regular as clockwork. He worked from six o’clock in the morning to six o’clock at night, six days a week. At midday he interrupted his work for exactly one hour, and walked up the few steps from his office on the ground floor to his flat on the first floor where the table was laid and his family were already sitting round it waiting for him. He had remained a modest, unpretentious man, despite his rise from a meager apprentice ironmonger to a successful businessman with several dozen employees.

  Little was known about his origins. His father came from the small Bohemian village of Rischkau
about fifty kilometers north of Prague and was a member of its Orthodox Jewish community. Thanks to the “new liberality” permitted to the Jews after 1848, he and his family left the ghetto for the outskirts of Prague in the hope of finding work to feed his wife and seven children. He found apprenticeships for two of his sons—Friedrich and Karl—in an ironmonger’s shop. Friedrich was just twelve.

  Friedrich’s success would have been unimaginable had it not been for the reforms of Emperor Joseph II. Joseph’s mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, had made the Jews the scapegoat for Austria’s poor performance in the war against Prussia and decreed that “from this moment onward no more Jews will be tolerated in the kingdom of Bohemia.”

  Joseph II introduced the century of Jewish emancipation. Influenced by the European Enlightenment he issued his so-called Patent of Tolerance in 1781, first in Bohemia, and Prague in particular: the city where it is said there were more Torah rolls than in Jerusalem itself. It stipulated that “rich Jews” could lease land without interference from the guilds and they could turn their hand to trade and industry. Schools were to be established where Jews would be taught in German, for the emperor wanted to “Germanize” the elite in order to bind them politically, administratively and economically as tightly as possible to Vienna. The new Jewish upper class played a decisive part in the economic development that raised Prague from a small, provincial city to a tri-racial metropolis. By 1825, out of 550 merchants and traders 240 were of Jewish origin. Thirteen out of a total of fifty factories were in Jewish hands.

  When the Jews received equal rights in 1867 their prospects once more decisively improved. Friedrich Herz had just turned fifteen and he exploited the new possibilities to the full. In the 1870s, together with his brother Karl and with the help of a private loan he created the firm Gebrüder Herz and built it up to become one of the biggest of its sort in the Empire. Karl died young, before Friedrich’s marriage.