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[Piano music playing]
Woman: One of the big benefits of living in this block
is having classical music
beautifully played morning and afternoon.
In fact, I know people who have been used to
standing outside the building in the street listening to her
and just admiring her playing,
and she still plays, every day.
Narrator: To the residents of this small apartment building
in North London,
Alice Sommer is the Lady in Number 6.
♪♪
My world is music.
I am not interested in anything else.
♪♪
[Laughs]
Narrator: Alice lives alone.
She still has her health, and at 109,
she feels she's the luckiest person alive.
Alice receives visitors every afternoon...
I always thought this was a silly person, a dope.
...friends who come to hear her stories
and maybe learn from her experience.
I love people. I love everyone.
I love people.
I love to speak with them.
I'm interested in the life of other people.
♪♪
Mostly I start to play, it's 10:00.
And when the people in the house listen to my playing,
"I know it's 10:00. She plays."
[Laughs]
♪♪
This is Bach.
I am full of joy.
In my house, for instance,
when I go with this,
I go [laughs] as an invalid.
I am the only one who is laughing.
Nobody laughs here in this house.
Narrator: Alice was born in Prague in 1903.
She grew up amongst many of the foremost
creative minds of the day.
Mahler and Kafka were family friends.
Sommer: When I was 10 years old,
my mother took me to a concert,
the first performance of the second symphony of Mahler.
It was in Vienna.
And Mahler was sitting there,
and my mother went to him, and they spoke together.
So I spoke, actually, a little bit with Gustav Mahler.
Narrator: As a young girl, she'd be asked to play the piano
for famous artists who'd stop by to visit her parents.
Franz Kafka -- he was a friend of my mother,
I can say.
She speaks -- she spoke with him for hours,
asking him what he's writing, what he's loving, or...
He was our friend.
And sometimes he took myself and my twin sister,
and we went for walks.
He told us stories which I'd forgot,
but I remember the atmosphere.
Made a deep impression.
My opinion is what we learn in school --
it is important, but much more important
is the atmosphere, intellectual atmosphere,
of your parents in your home.
This goes with you till you end.
♪♪
Beethoven -- he is a miracle.
♪♪
His music is not only melody.
What is inside...
what is inside, how it's felt --
it's full, it is intensive.
♪♪
Phenomenal.
Narrator: Inspired by her musical heroes,
Alice decided on a concert career.
She sought out the legendary pianist Artur Schnabel.
Had she made the right choice?
I wanted to know his opinion about my level.
And I played to him, and he said,
"You can't learn with me.
You can't learn anything else."
Narrator: Alice's life became a whirlwind
of rehearsals and concerts.
Then one day, a particular violinist caught her eye.
[Dramatic music plays]
Sommer: Leopold.
[Laughs] We called him "Bootsie."
[Laughs]
He was an extraordinary violinist,
and he knew languages perfect,
and everything he knew.
I was in love with his knowledge.
We married in '37.
And I told to my husband,
"Now we are married" -- in the evening when we came home --
"Now we are married."
In the moment when you will find another woman
who is -- who you like more, you can --
we stay friends.
It's okay.
There are thousands and thousands
of beautiful women in the world.
I will be very sad, of course, but you can do it."
Narrator: It was 1937,
and these were the best of times for Alice.
She married the man she loved,
she was becoming a musical celebrity,
and with the birth of her son, she had it all.
♪♪
My son, Raphael -- he was maybe 3 years old,
not yet, sitting the whole day.
He loved in this time was gramophone,
and suddenly it comes to an enormous fortissimo.
[Music swelling]
And the boy -- he was 3 years old --
started to cry.
And I asked, "Why do you cry?"
"The music is so beautiful."
Ah, it's...ah.
♪♪
[Applause]
♪♪
With music, I was always happy.
I am happy even without music.
Even thinking of music make me happy.
♪♪
One of the greatest philosophers said,
"Music is in the first place of art."
♪♪
It brings us on an island
with peace, beauty and love.
♪♪
Music is -- is a dream.
Music is a dream!
♪♪
[Cheers and applause]
[Dramatic music plays]
Narrator: Alice had been living her dream
until it came time for everyone's dreams to end.
Here is my best friend,
born, as well, in Prague
and brought up in Prague and so on.
Let her speak about it.
Fantlova: The day was 15th of March, 1939.
It was a Wednesday.
My father was calling us -- we were three children --
about 6:00 in the morning in excited voice,
which was rare for him.
"Come children. Come, come quickly to the window."
It was like an earthquake.
Thousands of German motorcycles,
these iron helmets,
rumbled through for hours.
But soon after we realized Czechoslovakia was taken over,
and Nuremberg Laws started to be implemented against the Jews.
My father had to sign off his whole business
that he's giving it away out of free will.
The radios have been confiscated.
Domestic animals have been confiscated -- my dog.
How do you explain it to the dog
there is a German invasion, and he has to go with them
and can't stay at home?
You know, these are the little details in life
that are so difficult.
[Shouting in German]
Narrator: Every day the Jews of Prague endured new humiliations.
Even Alice's daily walk in the park with Rafi
was forbidden.
For mothers, was very difficult, but I played.
[Laughs]
Narrator: Even on pain of death.
To the Nazis, music was a luxury for non-Jews only.
So Alice's beloved concert grand had been taken away.
But in an act of quiet resistance,
she hid her tiny piccolo piano.
♪♪
To Alice, being able to play meant everything,
even at the risk of betrayal.
Sommer: In my house, we are living four Nazi families.
I believe my boy was playing with their boy in the street.
They were good friends.
In any case, I played a lot at this time,
and once, the woman who take care of our house
came and said to me, "Mrs. Sommer,
Mr. Hellman" -- the name of this German man --
ask me suddenly you didn't play -- why?
He asked me whether you are already deportated.
He told me he loved your playing."
And this time [laughs] I didn't play,
but when she said he loved it, I was already sitting.
But before our deportation, he came.
"Frau Sommer, they will send you away.
It's difficult to find the right words for me.
I was sitting for hours and hours
and listening and enjoyed your playing.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
You helped us to get over the hard time
we went through as a German."
Narrator: While the whole world went mad around her,
Alice could still see the humanity in individual Germans,
though she and her people had become officially
less than human.
One by one, everyone in her life,
every Jew in Prague, was being taken away.
Fantlova: My father -- when the Gestapo came to arrest him,
he was standing at the door
with his coat, with his hat in his hand,
looked us over -- it was dinnertime --
and said only these words.
"Just stay calm. Remember, calmness is strength."
And they pushed him out, and that was the end.
And this sentence sort of stayed with me,
and it works.
It is true. Calmness is strength.
Sommer: My mother was sent away.
And I was till her last moment with her.
Very hard for me, for her.
We didn't know about where they were sent away.
We didn't know what -- what will happen with them.
It was a hard time.
Narrator: Despite the freedom Alice gave Leopold
on their wedding night, he never did leave her,
until the day the Nazis stole him away.
Finally, they came for Alice.
She was 39 when she and her little boy, Rafi,
arrived in the strangest place
in the entire concentration camp system,
Theresienstadt, a feed account for Auschwitz
where Jewish celebrities and intellectuals
were used by the Nazis for propaganda purposes.
These images were filmed to show the world
how well the Jews of Europe were being treated.
Starving prisoners were allowed to compose and give concerts.
I knew that we will play.
And I was thinking,
when we can play, it can't be so terrible.
The music, the music!
♪♪
Sommer: Ah, here they are.
Ah! So how is it going?
My Sunday friend.
She comes every Sunday. [Laughs]
Narrator: Zdenka and Anita stop by regularly
to visit their friend.
A pianist, and actress, and a cellist,
they all survived the camps.
But every day in life is beautiful.
Every day...
...that -- that we are here, we can speak about everything.
No? It's beautiful.
♪♪
Narrator: In Theresienstadt, Alice played over 100 concerts,
performing all of Chopin's études from memory.
Fantlova: That was my first time, actually,
I have heard all Chopin's études,
and I remember Alice sitting on the stage.
I was in about third row
and saw her from the right profile,
and I was quite captivated.
It was magic to hear this music in that kind of surrounding,
which you don't realize until it's over.
So you come sort of back to Earth and see where you are
and how much it was a moral support.
It was not entertainment, as most people think,
that we were having fun.
It had a much bigger value.
♪♪
I felt that this is the only thing
which helps me to...
to have hope.
It is sort of religion, actually.
Music is...
is God.
♪♪
In difficult times you feel it,
especially when you are suffering.
♪♪
Narrator: Alice's faith in music was an inspiration
to her son, Rafi.
He sang in Theresienstadt's children's opera, "Brundibár."
♪♪
And sustained by his mother's natural optimism,
he, too, survived.
Sommer: We are sleeping on a mattress.
He felt my body.
When a child is near to the mother,
everything can happen.
He's not afraid.
It gives him a security.
And I was always laughing.
Even there, I was laughing.
[Children singing]
Fantlova: So the people who were sitting in the audience,
and we on stage --
we were transported into a different time,
the time before when we lived in a normal civilized life,
civilized world,
and hoping and being convinced
that the war will soon finish,
and we'll go back home and it will go on.
But, of course, what we knew later,
the Germans knew full well
that we are sentenced to death and thought,
"Let them play. Let them laugh.
The laughter will soon vanish from their face."
And we were dancing under the gallows.
♪♪
Sommer: They were beautiful moments there.
I knew that even in this very difficult situation,
there are beautiful moments.
It doesn't exist anything in our world, only bad.
Even the bad is beautiful, I would say.
Even the bad is beautiful
when you know where to look for.
It has to be.
♪♪
When you are knowing that you will play in the evening,
the concert,
and people old, terribly ill people,
came to this concert and became...young.
♪♪
It is a mystery
that when the first tone of music starts,
it goes straight away in our soul.
♪♪
I loved to play the Number 1 and 2 études by Chopin.
The Number 1 is in C major.
Yeah, the C major is not so quick.
But Number 2 is quick.
The hand is closed, chromatic,
chromatic, very quick.
[Trills]
♪♪
Narrator: But it wasn't just the prisoners
who drew strength from Alice's music.
Even the camp guards listened,
stealing a few precious moments,
perhaps remembering the way life used to be.
Sommer: Some of them were standing next to the window
and -- and enjoying the music.
Afterwards, one of them told me,
"We always are standing here and listening to your music."
♪♪
Sometimes it happens
that I am thankful to have been there
because this gave me, ah --
I am richer than other people.
My reaction on life is -- it's quite another one.
All the complain, "This is terrible!"
It's not so terrible.
♪♪
My father always used to say the very wise words --
"Put as much as you can into your heads
because that's something nobody can take away from you."
And I think that is so very, very true.
And I think this is where music comes in,
the importance of music, because you can actually
have music in your head without anybody knowing it is happening.
You can actually go into another world
which is a lot nicer than the world we're actually living in.
♪♪
I can say without hesitation that the cello saved my life
because I knew what was going on in Auschwitz.
So I arrived in Auschwitz
really preparing to go in the gas chamber.
I mean, that was Auschwitz, was gas chambers.
Instead of that, when I arrived there,
some sort of ceremony,
you know, people take your clothes off you
and shave your head and tattoo a number on your arm.
And this is all done by prisoners,
and one of these said, "What's going on?
How long is the war going? Will it soon be over?"
You know sort of,
"What's your name, and where do you come from,
and what did you do before you were arrested?"
And like an idiot, I said, "I used to play the cello."
I mean, you know, really ridiculous thing to say.
And she said, "Oh, fantastic. You'll be saved."
♪♪
So I became a member of this orchestra,
which was completely life-saving
because as long as they wanted music,
they couldn't put us in the gas chamber.
I mean, you know, there's certain amount of logic
in the Germans.
The famous Dr. Mengele, you know, who was interested
in experiments on twins -- much feared man
because, you know, he just...
We were just like -- like guinea pigs.
You know, it's wonderful.
You can actually experiment on humans,
so you don't have to have guinea pigs.
And he came into the block. That was another thing.
You see, during the day anybody could walk into the music block
and ask for something.
We didn't just play marches. We played all sorts of
what were pop songs in those days
and arias from operettas.
And and he wanted to hear the "Traumerei" by Schumann,
and that was on my repertoire.
so I played the "Traumerei" by Schumann to Dr. Mengele.
Completely ludicrous situation.
God knows what he's just been doing before he came in
and wanted to hear the "Traumerei"
to, um, destroy himself a bit.
♪♪
You know, the more you think about it
and the more you talk about it, the more...
macabre the whole thing is.
♪♪
Fantlova: I think most people,
when they hear the word "Holocaust,"
see only two things -- gas chambers
and the number of 6 million and nothing in between,
but it was everythingin between.
Survival was, in a nutshell,
a matter of your attitude to the situation,
and the situation changed every five minutes.
And even when it was at the end,
Bergen-Belsen --
I was lying dying amongst 300 corpses.
Nobody took them out.
And the rest looked like corpses,
were still breathing.
It never occurred to me that I could be one of them.
Never.
I never felt like a victim.
I felt more like an observer.
I felt it has nothing to do with me.
I just happen to be here,
and I have to take it as it comes.
♪♪
Survival is a very complex matter.
You don't learn it.
It comes to you spontaneously.
♪♪
When you were really down in the hell
and come up again,
you have learned what matters in life and what doesn't,
and what matters is very few things.
Life matters, human relationships,
and that's about it.
The rest is not important.
One can live without,
and because of this, it has enriched my life,
and I'm grateful...
[voice breaking] for that experience.
I can say that.
♪♪
Well, I don't think I'm alone in the world.
As you know, I've got loads of grandchildren.
You know, any trouble you go to Grandma.
But basically everybody is alone in the world.
Of course.
In the end, we are all alone.
We are born alone. We die alone.Yeah, I mean --
And I feel if during the lifetime
we find somebody who can walk with us
part of the way, then we are already lucky.
Very lucky.
Until it comes to a crossroad and he's gone.
So one should be grateful for the time
that that person was with you
walking with you part of the life
and say, "Thank you."
My son -- I can't tell you
how beautiful my life through this child was.
♪♪
Narrator: After the war, Alice and Rafi left Europe for Israel,
where he followed his mother's example,
making his career in music.
For almost 50 years,
celebrated cellist Raphael Sommer
performed all around the world.
Sommer: He had a concert in Israel on Tuesday.
In the evening, he didn't feel well,
so they took him into the hospital.
They gave him an anesthetic -- you know what it is?
And he didn't, uh...
He didn't, uh...
He died.
So he was 64 years old.
He didn't suffer.
He didn't know that he will die, and he...
It's a privilege.
I have to be thankful he didn't, uh --
he didn't suffer.
♪♪
He didn't know what it is to be old.
In this age, you are not yet old -- 64.
♪♪
On Tuesday, he didn't know that on Wednesday he will die
without pains.
This is the greatest miracle and privilege,
and I am thankful every day 100, 100, 100 times.
♪♪
It depends on me whether life is good or not -- on me.
Not on life, on me.
Everything is good or bad. I look at the good side.
♪♪
I think perhaps we don't take life for granted.
It was given to us twice -- once we were born
and then -- then we didn't die,
contrary to the intention of the Germans,
and we had another chance.
I suppose maybe we, uh -- we used it more consciously,
didn't just take it for granted.
"Well, you live in this world and we are very depressed,"
and whatever [laughs] people indulge in.
♪♪
Narrator: Even today,
Alice relentlessly practices the music that she loves.
After a century at the keyboard,
she's still searching for perfection.
Sommer: Without work, you can't achieve anything.
Millions and millions of hours working on what you love.
When you love something, work and work and work
and work it.
♪♪
A lot of German journalists come and want to know,
speak with me and so on.
Before they enter my room, they ask,
"Are we allowed to enter your room?
Do you not hate us?"
So my answer is, "I never hated and I never hate."
Hatred brings only hatred.
♪♪
We should thank Bach,
Beethoven to Brahms to Schubert to Schumann.
They gave us beauty.
They gave us undescribable beauty.
They made us more happy.
♪♪
Narrator: The remarkable Alice Sommer --
at 109, the oldest Holocaust survivor in the world.
Sommer: Only when we are so old -- only --
we are aware of the beauty of life.
♪♪
[Record whirring and scratching]
[Clicking]
♪♪
[Whooshing]