Posted on 11/26/2010 4:55:49 AM PST by Eleutheria5
LONDON (Nov. 25) -- Former concert pianist Alice Herz-Sommer is living proof of the power of music. The world's oldest Holocaust survivor, who celebrates her 107th birthday Friday, endured the deprivations of the Prague ghetto, imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp and the murder of her husband, mother and countless other family members. Only her love of music, she says, sustained her throughout those years of darkness and heartbreak.
While her tale of survival is astonishing, what's perhaps more remarkable is that, despite seeing humanity at its worst, Sommer remains a fierce optimist and a believer in the fundamental goodness of mankind. "This is the reason I am so old, even now, I am sure," she recently told the U.K.'s Sunday Express. "I know about the bad things, but I look only for the good things. The world is wonderful, it's full of beauty and miracles, art and music."
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