A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor by Caroline Stoessinger

Author:Caroline Stoessinger [Stoessinger, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780679644019
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-03-20T07:00:00+00:00

TEN

Snapshots

Alice lives amid her few remaining photographs and mementos. Her one-room flat, humble in its timeworn simplicity, is a kind of cocoon carrying her memories forward day by day. Her furniture is a collection of unmatched items, from the upholstered green velour chair to the metal tables that look as if they are discards from someone else on moving day. Her antique Steinway upright piano is centered against the long wall. Without design, each visible remembrance intertwines with another, invoking a portrait of Alice’s life.

When one first enters Alice’s studio apartment, a large framed portrait of a dashing, youngish man wearing an eye patch catches the eye. It is a photograph of Alice’s most beloved piano teacher, Václav Štěpán. He had lost his left eye in an accident in the military during World War I, but in no way did this injury hinder his artistry; in fact, Štěpán could deliver lengthy explanations of the value of limited vision for musicians. He was regarded as one of Czechoslovakia’s finest and most daring pianists and was highly sought after as a teacher for both piano and composition.

Štěpán was one of the first people Alice tried to find when she returned to Prague in 1945, and she was heartbroken to learn that he had died of cancer shortly before the city’s liberation. Professor Štěpán was so influential—musically and personally—to her that she even named her baby after him. Štěpán’s widow had given the framed photograph to Alice as a memento.

In addition to Štěpán’s portrait, there are pictures of Rafi everywhere in Alice’s room. The center photograph on her piano shows Rafi with Pablo Casals and was taken in the summer of 1965 at the acclaimed Marlboro Music Festival. Rafi had played in a performance of Bach’s Suite no. 2 in B Minor conducted by Casals. Two weeks later Rafi was the cellist for the Boccherini Quintet, and this time Casals was a member of his audience. Alice was more thrilled than Rafi when he wrote to her about the concerts; she understood how lasting the time in the presence of the great Casals could be. When she wrote back to her son in the States, she reminded him to keep careful notes each day. He must remember every word the maestro uttered.

The weeks Rafi spent at Marlboro, working with the greatest musicians from across the globe in the forested Green Mountains of Vermont, were unforgettable. Founded by Rudolf Serkin to promote chamber music concerts in his new country, the festival was uniquely democratic in that the young artists played in ensembles with the great and the famous. Serkin, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1903, the same year as Alice, was already a world-famous pianist; he and several members of his family had been fortunate to escape to the United States in 1939. Rafi never told Serkin that he was a Holocaust survivor. For Rafi, the experience was all about music. The violinist Jaime Laredo vividly remembers Rafi not only as a fine cellist but as an ebullient young man full of humor.

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