She was born in 1903 in what was then Austria-Hungary. Alice Herz-Sommer was raised in a German speaking Jewish family. Early on, she displayed enormous talent at the piano and at sixteen, she was the youngest student of the Prague German Conservatory of Music. She toured Europe, impressing thousands.

Then came 1943 and the rise of Hitler. By now, Alice was married and had a young son. German soldiers ultimately hauled off Alice and her family. Not before she watched hopelessly as her neighbors ransacked her home, gleefully helping themselves to her clothes, art and furniture. Her husband was taken to Dachau, while Alice and her son were imprisoned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Here, the Nazis imprisoned many gifted artists, demanding that they perform concerts for them, a propaganda effort to convince the world that Nazis treated their prisoners well.

Ultimately, Alice was released from the prison but not before her mother was killed by the Nazis, and her husband died of Typhus at Dachau...six weeks before the camp was liberated.

Alice went back to giving concerts...playing piano...teaching at the Jerusalem Academy of Music for 40 years. She is said to have practiced playing the piano three hours a day until the week she died at the incredible age of 110--the oldest known Holocaust survivor.

Alice once said, “I look at the good. It us up to us whether we look at the good or the bad....”

I don’t know what darkness has descended upon your soul lately, but I do know this. Alice’s life message is remarkably consistent with Philippians 4:8: “Whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.”

Bad stuff will happen.
What we focus on then is ultimately a choice.
Ours.