What’s Your Excuse?

Alice Herz-Sommer had every reason to hate. The Nazis had destroyed her life as Prague's celebrated concert pianist, murdered her mother in the camps, killed her husband in Dachau, and imprisoned her with her six-year-old son in Theresienstadt concentration camp. And yet, at age 110, she would become known not just as the world's oldest Holocaust survivor, but as its most joyful.

In the darkest moments of her imprisonment, Alice chose music and kindness as her rebellion against despair. She performed more than 100 concerts in the camp, her fingers bringing Bach, Chopin, and Beethoven to life for fellow prisoners, creating islands of beauty in an ocean of suffering. Hunger gnawed and cold penetrated to the bone, but she refused to let hatred take root in her heart.

When liberation came, Alice faced a choice that would define her remaining years. Where many might have nursed their wounds with bitterness, she chose to embrace life anew. She refused to break. In Israel, she rebuilt her existence note by note, teaching music and spreading the joy she had never surrendered. The piano sang daily. Her fingers remembered. In her final years in London, she maintained a daily ritual of practicing piano for hours, greeting every person with genuine warmth, and insisting with unwavering conviction that life was beautiful.