Ilana Kirschner was a little girl of twelve when she was sent to Theresienstadt. Nearly seventy years have gone by since that terrible time but a few months ago the 81-year-old Kfar Saba resident was vividly reminded of the less dark times when she read an article about Alice Herz-Sommer in The Jerusalem Post.

Now well over 100 and the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor, the article recalled how Alice would play the piano and give concerts when she was also imprisoned in Theresienstadt and felt that her music saved her life. Reading the article, the sights and sounds of the concentration camp came flooding back to Ilana. She remembered how she would stand outside the concert hall, listening for hours to the rehearsals, particularly Verdi’s Requiem, played by Sommer and other camp residents.

 “We were tired and hungry and thirsty,” says the petite Ilana, born Yanna in Czechoslovakia in 1931. “But the music was magnificent and wonderful to hear - especially in that place.”

In June 1943 the Jews of Ostrava, where she lived with her parents, were rounded up and sent to Theresienstadt.

“I suppose in a sense we were lucky to be taken there,” she says, since it was considered a ‘model’ camp, “although we were just as hungry.”

She remembers being given watery soup, sometimes a potato and a bit of bread. She spent time with friends from school and went to all the theatrical performances and concerts.

“I’d always loved music as a child,” she says. ”There were a lot of performances and we were able to hear unbelievable music. That’s how we got our education.”

She clearly remembers the visit of the Red Cross to inspect the camp when the Germans put on a show to make it look less like a concentration camp.

“Thousands of people were sent to Auschwitz the day before to make the streets look less crowded,” she recalls. “I don’t know if the Red Cross knew the truth – they couldn’t have been as stupid as that - maybe they were,” she concludes, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

In 1945, after also being imprisoned in Auschwitz and Mauthausen, Ilana was liberated weighing 29 kilos. She is still very slight and thin. After the war she had health problems, having suffered from typhus, “but I was very lucky to survive,” she says.

After returning to Prague she reunited with her father – her mother had died soon after liberation – and eventually he and his new wife decided to come to Israel.

It was January, 1949. Ilana didn’t want to live with her father and stepmother who moved to Hadera. She was 17 and stayed in Tel Aviv with cousins. Because she knew English she got a job in the Cable and Wireless Company and had to learn Morse code to read the teleprinters of those days.

It was here that she met her husband Gideon Kirschner who had left Berlin in 1938 and had been a volunteer in the British army. He was eleven years older and fell in love with the petite dainty Ilana the minute he met her. They married in December, 1949.

Ilana always worked as a secretary and loved it. Gideon was a co-founder of Elbit Electronics and they lived for many years in Haifa. She has one daughter, Edna – “that was all I could manage” she says and she has three grandchildren and two great grand-daughters.

After retirement they came to Kfar Saba to be with Edna and her family. Ten years ago Edna moved to a moshav but Ilana and Gideon stayed, liking the town. Sadly, Gideon died four years ago and today Ilana keeps busy with several volunteer jobs.

She volunteers at the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, helping other survivors; she helps at National Insurance advising the elderly; and she works in a block of small apartments established by the municipality to house old people.

She misses Gideon. “Everything I know he taught me,” she says. But she sees the family as often as possible, likes to read and has several good friends nearby.

And of course she has the music.