Listen
to Alice Herz-Sommer, now 110 years old (109 when the video was made) play the
piano. She is the oldest living Holocaust survivor. Alice was born in Prague, Austria-Hungary.
Her father was a merchant, her mother was highly educated and moved in circles
of well-known writers, and her older sister Irma taught her how to play piano,
which she studied diligently. She also studied under Václav Štěpán (cs),
and at the Prague German Conservatory of Music. She had begun giving concerts
and making a name for herself before the Germans took over her city. In July
1943, Alice, her husband, and six-year-old son Raphael were sent to
Theresienstadt concentration camp where she played more than 100 concerts with
other musicians. Her husband was later sent to Auschwitz and then to Dachau where
he died in 1944. After the Soviet liberation of Theresienstadt in 1945, Alice
and her son returned to Prague and in March 1949 emigrated to Israel to be
reunited with her family. She lived in Israel and worked as a music teacher in
Jerusalem until emigrating to London in 1986. Watch this amazing video and
please share it with others -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oxO3M6rAPw#t=27
The witnesses, laying their coats at the feet of Saul, were the men that would cast the first stones at Stephen in Acts 7. Why did they all lay their coats at Saul’s feet? The Talmud contains a very interesting account of the act of stoning that may provide the answer. “When the trial was over, they take him [the condemned person] out to be stoned. The place of stoning was at a distance from the court, as it is said, ‘Take out the one who has cursed.’ [i] A man stands at the entrance of the court; in his hand is a signaling flag [Hebrew sudarin = sudar , ‘scarf, sweater’]. A horseman was stationed far away but within sight of him. If one [of the judges] says, ‘I have something [more] to say in his favor,’ he [the signaler] waves the sudarin , and the horseman runs and stops them [from stoning him]. Even if [the condemned person] himself says, ‘I have something to say in my favor,’ they bring him back, even four of five times, only provided that there is some substance to what he
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