Oldest-known Holocaust survivor dies aged 110 – family

Photo dated July 2010 made available by the makers of the Oscar nominated documentary The Lady in Number 6, in which she tells her story, of Alice Herz-Sommer, believed to be the oldest-known survivor of the Holocaust, who died in London on Sunday morning at the age of 110. Herz-Sommer’s devotion to the piano and to her son sustained her through two years in a Nazi prison camp. AP

LONDON – The world’s oldest known Holocaust survivor, the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, has died in London aged 110, her family announced Sunday.

Alice Herz-Sommer, originally from Prague, spent two years of World War II in Czechoslovakia’s Terezin concentration camp, where she entertained inmates by playing the piano.

Her grandson, Ariel Sommer, explained: “Alice Sommer passed away peacefully this morning with her family by her bedside. Much has been written about her, but to those of us who knew her best, she was our dear ‘Gigi’.

“She loved us, laughed with us, and cherished music with us. She was an inspiration and our world will be significantly poorer without her by our side. We mourn her loss and ask for privacy in this very difficult moment.”

Herz-Sommer, who was a family friend of existentialist writer Franz Kafka, is the subject of the Oscar-nominated film “The Lady In Number 6: Music Saved My Life”.

The 38-minute film, in which she shares her life story and describes the importance of music and laughter for a happy life, is up for best short documentary at Sunday’s Academy Awards.

Around 140,000 Jews were sent to the Terezin camp, of whom 33,430 died.