Tortelier, Paul
Tortelier, Yan Pascal
Treblinka
Treichlinger, Honza
Ullmann, Viktor
Ungar, Otto
Utitz, Emil
Verdi, Giuseppe
Vienna International Piano Competition
Von Bülow, Hans
Wachtel, Erich
Wedekind, Frank
Weingartner, Felix
Weinmann, Rudolf
Weiskopf, Franz Carl
Weiskopf, Helene
Weiss, Arnošt
Weiss, Felix
Weiss, Fritzek
Weissenstein, Franta
Weizmann, Chaim
Weltsch, Felix (Irma’s husband)
Alice’s friendship with
emigration of
marriage of
Weltsch, Heinrich (Felix’s father)
Weltsch, Irma (née Herz; Alice’s sister)
emigration of
marriage of
Weltsch, Luise (Felix’s mother)
Weltsch, Mickie (Ruth’s son)
Weltsch, Ruth (Irma’s daughter)
birth of
Weltsch, Willi
Werfel, Alma
Werfel, Franz
Witztum, Amoz
World War I
Wurzel, Gisa
Zelenka, František
Zemlinsky, Alexander von
Zionism
Zucker, Otto
Zuzumi, Sujoschi
Zweig, Stefan
Sofie Schulz, c. 1883.
Friedrich Herz, c. 1890
George and Irma Herz, c. 1897.
Paul Herz, 1901.
Map of Prague.
The swimming school.
Alice (on the left) and Mizzi, with their friend Helene Weiskopf, in 1911.
Mizzi and Alice in 1916.
With schoolfriends, around 1917. Mizzi is second from the left, Trude Hutter, fourth, Daisy Klemperer, fifth, and Alice is on the right.
Max Brod.
Oskar Baum.
Felix Weltsch.
Franz Kafka.
Alice, age twenty, with her great love, Rudolf Kraus.
Alice rehearsing at the Music Academy.
The brilliant pianist in 1924, the year of her debut performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto in E minor.
Alice with her baby nephew, Heinz Adler, in 1929.
Leopold Sommer in 1935.
Dr. Ernst Boronow in 1930.
Alice and Leopold outside the registry office after their wedding.
Alice’s parents-in-law, around 1933.
The proud mother with her son, Stephan, in 1938.
A happy moment in occupied Prague, 1939.
Emil and Marianne Adler (on the left) sailing to Palestine.
Stephan (far left, back row) at the Jewish kindergarten in Prague in 1941.
“Jews Forbidden”—Stephan at the entrance to the park in 1940.
The last photograph of Sofie Herz, taken in 1942, just before she was deported.
One of the Sommers’ house concerts at Sternberggasse in 1941. From left to right: Paul Herz, Leopold Sommer, Jósi Haas, Erich Wachtel.
A ticket for what was probably Alice’s last Theresienstadt concert.
Stephan (front row, fourth from left) in the children’s opera Brundibár. The performance was recorded in a Nazi propaganda film of 1944.
At last, their own piano again. Alice giving Stephan a lesson in 1945.
Alice and Stephan treasured Leopold’s spoon, brought to them by a fellow prisoner from Auschwitz. It was all they had to remember him by.
Alice, in 1947, with her friend Robert Sachsel.
Reunited in Prague, Alice and Marianne in 1947.
A publicity photo and the poster for Alice’s first post-war concert.
The family reunited in Israel in 1949: back row, left to right, Irma Weltsch and her daughter Ruth, Emil Adler and his son Heinz (Chaim), Felix Weltsch; front row, Stephan (Raphael), Alice and Marianne.
Raphael with his mother on the balcony of the Adlers’ flat in Jerusalem.
Raphael around 1956. During his national service, Raphael was a saxophonist in the Israeli Army’s military band.
Max Brod with Ruth Weltsch and her husband, Benjamin Gorenstein, in 1966.
Jerusalem in the 1960s. From left: Alice’s best friend, the pianist Edith Kraus, with her second husband, Marianne Adler, Alice, Alice’s niece Ruth, with her husband Benny Gorenstein (behind Alice), and Edith Kraus’s daughter with her husband.
Alice and Marianne, with Marianne’s daughter-in-law, Bath-Sheva Adler.
Raphael Sommer, cello virtuoso.
Emil Adler, Alice and Marianne in Braunwald, in Switzerland, in 1966.
Alice at her son’s grave.
Alice’s 100th birthday.
Alice, age 102, listening to music at home in Hampstead, in 2005.
About the Authors
Melissa Müller is an author and journalist living in Munich. Her collaboration with Traudl Junge was translated into more than twenty languages and became an international bestseller. She is also the author of the bestseller Anne Frank: The Biography.
Reinhard Piechocki is the author of a number of works of cultural history and has been a close friend of Alice Herz-Sommer for many years.
Alice Herz-Sommer, at 108 years old, is the oldest living Holocaust survivor. She lives in London, where her grandsons, David and Ariel Sommer, as well as her stepdaughter, Geneviève Sommer, see her regularly.
ALICE’S PIANO. Copyright © Droemer 2006. Translation copyright © Pan Macmillan 2007. Foreword copyright © 2007 by Alice Herz-Sommer. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
ISBN 978-1-250-00741-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-0192-9 (e-book)
This edition published in the United States by St. Martin’s Press in 2012.
Originally published in 2006 as Ein Garten Eden immitten der Hölle by Droemer Knaur, Munich
First U.S. Edition: March 2012
*RSHA or Reich Security Main Office was the office created after the amalgamation of the Security Service and the Security Police. It came under the authority of Heinrich Himmler. From mid-1941 one of its tasks was the technical implementation of the Final Solution.
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