Scan barcode
Reviews
A Garden of Eden in Hell: The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer by Melissa Müller, Reinhard Piechocki
avery_21's review against another edition
4.0
When I first saw this book it seemed to be a book about a holocaust survivor. But now that I finally read it, it much more than just that. It's the story of a girl who grows into a woman. Her journey in music that saved her life more than once. The book starts with a girl who is as optimistic as they get. She sees beauty in life. And when she discovers the piano she starts to make it beautiful as well. Music shapes her life and brings her a man that loves her with results in a son that adores her.
As the nazis start to advance on the rest of Europe some family members decide to leave for Jerusalem, Alice and Leopold choice to stay behind with their son Stephan. The world starts to get grimmer and grimmer and in the end they get their deporatation orders in.
They end up in Theresienstadt and they try to make life as normal as possible for Stephan. In the camp there is a comity that arranges concerts to be played by all the musicians imprisoned. Alice gets to practise and play her beloved piano. It lifts the spirits of all who come and listen. It is her music that saves her life time and again. It keeps her from being deported to other camps and she stays at Theresienstadt until the end of the war.
Returning to her home, life is not the way it was before and she decides to move to her family in Jerusalem to start over.
This book is a beautiful account of the life behind the horror. It gave me an inside into the camps and that it wasn't just all horrible. Alice tried to make the best of a bad situation and her personality and positivity is an inspiration.
As the nazis start to advance on the rest of Europe some family members decide to leave for Jerusalem, Alice and Leopold choice to stay behind with their son Stephan. The world starts to get grimmer and grimmer and in the end they get their deporatation orders in.
They end up in Theresienstadt and they try to make life as normal as possible for Stephan. In the camp there is a comity that arranges concerts to be played by all the musicians imprisoned. Alice gets to practise and play her beloved piano. It lifts the spirits of all who come and listen. It is her music that saves her life time and again. It keeps her from being deported to other camps and she stays at Theresienstadt until the end of the war.
Returning to her home, life is not the way it was before and she decides to move to her family in Jerusalem to start over.
This book is a beautiful account of the life behind the horror. It gave me an inside into the camps and that it wasn't just all horrible. Alice tried to make the best of a bad situation and her personality and positivity is an inspiration.
burrowsi1's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
in2reading's review against another edition
3.0
It was an inspirational story. I'm intrigued enough that I'm going to read a second biography of Alice Herz-Sommer that came out this month: Alice's Piano.
arw1g10's review against another edition
4.0
The book was not what I had expected but I enjoyed it very much. If you're looking for a piece of Holocaust text then this would be the wrong choice however if you are interested in music and its very real power over the human soul then this is the book for you. It follows the life of the talented pianist Alice Herz-Sommer and, though not till substantially through the book, her and her families lives in occupied czechoslovakia and later in Theresienstadt. Musical explanations are accompanied by snippets of the individuals lives whom Alice's music touched. Furthermore, the book encompasses Alice's entire life, the impact her incarceration had upon her and her son, her reaction to the news of her husband's death in Dachau and the new life she built for herself in Palestine giving a wonderfully full picture of a life that both existed within, and survived, the nazi regime and the final solution.
More...