bookslover
Puritan Board Doctor
I recently read the obituary for this amazing Czech woman (her last name is pronounced "rougeITCHkova"), who was a classical harpsichordist better known in Europe than here.
She definitely experienced moral evil on a massive scale up close and personal. She survived being in three Nazi concentration camps (Terezin, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, in that order), beat the gas chamber at Auschwitz twice (once by lying about her age, once through camp disruption at D-Day), lost family members in the war, and was forced to do hard physical work by the Nazis. When her last camp, Bergen-Belsen, was liberated by the Allies in 1945, she weighed 70 pounds and had malaria. She was 18.
Then, after the war, she had to deal with the anti-Semitism of Soviet communism, once back in her native Czechoslovakia (as it was known then).
And yet, she not only survived, but built a major career as a harpsichordist in Europe after the war. She had to practice more than 12 hours a day in order to get herself back in shape after the war.
Her complete recordings of Bach's keyboard works (1965-1975) were digitally remastered and re-issued on CDs (a 20-CD boxed set) in time for her 90th birthday last January.
She died on September 27. A seriously amazing woman.
She definitely experienced moral evil on a massive scale up close and personal. She survived being in three Nazi concentration camps (Terezin, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, in that order), beat the gas chamber at Auschwitz twice (once by lying about her age, once through camp disruption at D-Day), lost family members in the war, and was forced to do hard physical work by the Nazis. When her last camp, Bergen-Belsen, was liberated by the Allies in 1945, she weighed 70 pounds and had malaria. She was 18.
Then, after the war, she had to deal with the anti-Semitism of Soviet communism, once back in her native Czechoslovakia (as it was known then).
And yet, she not only survived, but built a major career as a harpsichordist in Europe after the war. She had to practice more than 12 hours a day in order to get herself back in shape after the war.
Her complete recordings of Bach's keyboard works (1965-1975) were digitally remastered and re-issued on CDs (a 20-CD boxed set) in time for her 90th birthday last January.
She died on September 27. A seriously amazing woman.
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