Suffering is not ennobling

We should not set up Alice Herz-Sommer’s optimism as the ideal to which all Holocaust survivors should aspire.

SO, the luminous Alice Herz-Sommer, Holocaust survivor and pianist, has finally died. The “end of an era” is often proclaimed, but the death of Herz-Sommer – at 110 almost certainly the oldest Holocaust survivor – has a better claim than most.