One Hundred Miracles

The remarkable memoir of Zuzana Ru ickov , Holocaust survivor and world-famous harpsichordist. Zuzana Ru ickov grew up in 1930s Czechoslovakia dreaming of two things: Johann Sebastian Bach and the piano. But her peaceful, melodic childhood was torn apart when, in 1939, the Nazis invaded.Uprooted from her home, transported from Auschwitz to Hamburg to Bergen-Belsen, bereaved, starved, and afflicted with crippling injuries to her musician s hands, the teenage Zuzana faced a series of devastating defeats. Yet with every truck and train ride, a small slip of paper printed with her favourite piece of Bach s music became her talisman. Armed with this proof that beauty still existed , Zuzana s fierce bravery and passion ensured her survival of the greatest human atrocities of all time, and would continue to sustain her through the brutalities of post-war Communist rule.Harnessing her talent and dedication, and fortified by the love of her husband, the Czech composer Viktor Kalabis, Zuzana went on to become one of the twentieth century s most renowned musicians and the first harpsichordist to record the entirety of Bach s keyboard works. Zuzana s story, told here in her own words before her death in 2017, is a profound and powerful testimony of the horrors of the Holocaust, and a testament in itself to the importance of amplifying the voices of its survivors today. It is also a joyful celebration of art and resistance that defined the life of the first lady of the harpsichord a woman who spent her life being ceaselessly reborn through her music.Like the music of her beloved Bach, Zuzana s life is the story of the tragic transmuted through art into the state of the sublime.