The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life

The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life (2014) is a Canadian short documentary co- written and directed by Malcolm Clarke. It introduces us to Eliza Sommer-Herz, a holocaust survivor, still going strong at age 109!

Ms. Sommer-Herz was--and is--a classical musician. Although she suffered terribly during the Holocaust, she remained alive because the Nazis wanted to show outsiders that even their concentration camps contained orchestras.

Now, Ms. Sommer-Herz vividly remembers the horrors of the Holocaust, but she refuses to let her suffering define her life. She is fully alive, fully active, and still plays the piano every day.

In the film, two of her friends are visiting her, and, for some reason, they aren't listed in the credits. I would have liked to have known more about them, as well as about Ms. Sommer- Herz. However, director Clarke clearly made the decision that film this was the story of the Lady in Number 6, and that's what he presents to us.

This movie is definitely worth seeking out and viewing. It won an Oscar for Best Short Documentary, and that honor was fully deserved. It will work well on DVD. We had the privilege of seeing it at Rochester's wonderful Dryden Theatre, as part of the fabulous Rochester Jewish Film Festival.

Today I made my annual pilgrimage to the local theater to see all the Oscar-nominated Documentary Shorts. My good friend came with me and force once we were in agreement as to which shorts were strongest and weakest--which is a little unusual.

"The Lady in Number 6" is a film about Alice Herz Sommers. Although she is 109 when the film was made, she was amazingly healthy and vibrant in the short. It begins with her playing beautiful classical music on the piano and she does on to tell her life story. She was a concert pianist who grew up in Czechoslovakia--a very successful one. However, her life with her husband Leopold* and son Raphael changed forever when the Nazis invaded in early 1939. She, along with a couple friends, then talk about their experiences in the Nazi camp Theresienstadt--a fake model prison where the Red Cross was fooled into believing the Nazis were benevolent towards the Jews--a camp where music and the arts thrived (at least when folks from the outside were watching).

The story, however, is not just about the horrors but about how Alice's positive thinking helped her survive and thrive in this hell. In many ways, it's a nice complement to Victor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning"--a book that asks what is it about some inmates that helped them survive whereas others just shriveled up and died. It's all very interesting and informative and makes for lovely viewing. The film's strengths are its existential undercurrent as well as the amazingly artistic quality of the film itself. From a purely technical point of view, it is the most professional looking of the nominees--with amazing post-production work and direction.

*By the way, this film made an odd omission. While it talks about Alice and her son, no further mention is made of Leopold! He apparently was killed in Auschwitz. Also, I checked. At 110, Alice is still going strong!

People usually say that sometimes real life stories are so extraordinary that one cannot believe it would be true, even if it was fictional. This is the feeling I had watching this documentary, together with absolute admiration for Ms Alice. Her relentless believe and search of everything that is beautiful even when everything is horrible around us.

This is not about music and much less about Jewish people or the holocaust. This film is one of the strongest manifests for humanity and what is really important in life.

I very seldomly give the maximum grade to any movie or documentary but this one is an absolute must see.