Alice's Piano

The story of Holocaust survivor and pianist Alice Herz-Sommer: “A miraculous journey of mother and son for whom music provided strength and nourishment.” —Kirkus Reviews

Alice Herz-Sommer was born in Prague in 1903. A talented pianist from a very early age, she became famous throughout Europe. But as the Nazis rose to power, her world crumbled. In 1942, her mother was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and vanished. In 1943, Alice, her husband, and their six-year-old son were sent there, too.

In the midst of horror, music, especially Chopin’s Etudes, was Alice’s salvation. Theresienstadt was a “show camp” —a living slice of Nazi propaganda created to convince outsiders that the Jews were being treated humanely. In more than a hundred concerts, Alice gave her fellow prisoners hope in a time of suffering. Written with the cooperation of Alice Herz-Sommer, who contributes a foreword, Melissa Müller and Reinhard Piechocki’s Alice’s Piano is the first time her story has been told.

“Most moving is the story throughout of her loving bond with her son and how she saved him. No politics, intolerance, or self-righteousness, no talk of revenge, always the rigor and joy of music.” —Booklist (starred review)

Published in the UK as A Garden of Eden in Hell