The world’s oldest known Holocaust survivor, who inspired an Oscar-nominated documentary about her extraordinary life, has died here aged 110. Born in a Jewish family in Prague in 1903, Alice Herz-Sommer, an accomplished pianist and music teacher, spent two years in a Nazi concentration camp in Terezin.
A film about the centenarian titled The lady in Number 6: Music Saved My life has been nominated for best short documentary at next month’s Academy Awards. Herz-Sommer died in a hospital on Sunday, days after she was admitted with an infection. She taught at the Jerusalem Conservatory until 1986, when she moved to london, the BBC reported.
“We all came to believe that she would just never die,” said Frederic Bohbot, producer of the documentary on her. Herz-Sommer is believed to have continued playing Schubert and Beethoven until her final days. “I am Jewish, but Beethoven is my religion. I am no longer myself. The body cannot resist as it did in the past,” Herz-Sommer wrote on the film’s website.