Years ago, I happened upon the 39-minute Academy Award winning documentary by Malcolm Clarke called The Lady in Number 6. It tells the story of the life of Alice Herz-Sommer, pianist and Holocaust survivor, born in Prague, who died at the age of 110.
The movie touched my soul, not because of the experience she had in the camps but because of the person she was and her approach towards life. She was born an optimist and was always laughing, even in the camps.
I’ve felt that the film contains all the life lessons a person needs to live a happy life so I started showing it at the end of each divorce recovery retreat I would run, in spite of the fact that it has nothing to do with divorce. The women watching always reacted as I did, inspired to love life.
It had been a while since I've shown the film so I decided to offer a free online screening, which took place yesterday.
I timed it so I could invite the whole world. 200 women from the Runaway Husbands community registered from everywhere - India, Thailand, South Africa, Kenya, New Zealand, Israel, Australia, Britain, Ireland, all over Europe, all over Canada and the US (including Hawaii). We started at 4:30pm Montreal time (where I live), which is 1:30pm on the west coast, 9:30pm in Britain, 10:30 pm in Europe, 6:30am the next day in Australia and 8:30am in New Zealand. The women in India and Thailand set their alarms to wake up in the middle of the night.
Of course, everyone just loved the film and then we talked about the lessons learned which I’ll share with you here. Most are from Alice Herz-Sommer (AHS) but the film includes her two friends, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch (ALW), a cellist and Zdanka Fantlova (ZF), an actress (who incidentally died at the age of 100), who also survived the camps by performing - a way the Germans tried to prove how well the prisoners were treated. Their lessons are also shared:
It depends on me whether life is good or not. Not on life, on me. (AHS)
Calmness is strength. (ZF)
Survival is complex and a matter of attitude. (ALW)
Even the bad is beautiful if you know where to look for it. (AHS)
When you’ve been so close to death, you realize only two things are important: life itself and human relations. Everything else you can do without. (ZF)
When you walk part of your life with someone and you come to a crossroads and he leaves, appreciate it and say thank you. (ZF)
Everything in life is both good and bad. I choose to look at the good. (AHS)
I don’t hate anyone. Hatred breeds hatred. (AHS)
It never occurred to me that I wasn’t going to survive - this is happening to me but it’s not about me. (ZF)
Every day in life is beautiful . . . every day! (AHS)
Only when we are so old, only, are we aware of the beauty of life. (AHS)
In the film, Alice tells the story of her beloved son, Raphael, who was with her as a child in the camps. He grew up to be a cellist and had a brilliant concert career. One day when he was 64, he wasn’t feeling well so he went to the hospital. He was given an anesthetic and the next day, he died. Somehow, Alice manages to extract the only positive aspect of this tragedy and she says, “I thank god a hundred, hundred, hundred times a day that he didn’t suffer.” That is an extreme example of how she managed to look at the good.
It’s so important to have mentors in life and I’m so grateful that I have Alice Herz-Sommer.
