Alice Herz Sommer has died. I found out when I was flicking through The Independent earlier this morning. Lovely Alice.
Sometimes I would visit her at her flat, and sometimes she would even let me take her photograph. I first met her when she was 99 years old, and she talked for a while about this and that, and then she told me about the spoon. She said that after the war, a man who had been friends with her husband in Dachau, tracked her down and brought with him the sad tale of her husband's death from typhus, and her husbands spoon, the only thing he possessed in the camp.
After she had told me all this, she got up from her chair and went to a drawer in the dresser and after a moments rummaging she returned clutching her treasure, Alice still had the spoon. We decided we would photograph it.
There are plenty of photos of Alice around in various publications today, some of them mine, but none with the spoon.
Alice Herz Sommer 1903-2014
Sometimes I would visit her at her flat, and sometimes she would even let me take her photograph. I first met her when she was 99 years old, and she talked for a while about this and that, and then she told me about the spoon. She said that after the war, a man who had been friends with her husband in Dachau, tracked her down and brought with him the sad tale of her husband's death from typhus, and her husbands spoon, the only thing he possessed in the camp.
After she had told me all this, she got up from her chair and went to a drawer in the dresser and after a moments rummaging she returned clutching her treasure, Alice still had the spoon. We decided we would photograph it.
There are plenty of photos of Alice around in various publications today, some of them mine, but none with the spoon.
Alice Herz Sommer 1903-2014
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