Illustration by Uday Deb

The author recounts her meeting with a woman of extraordinary courage and willpower

Life’s journey sometimes takes us to strange places and situations. I have had plenty of those but very few come close to my association with Lotte Nivelli, a woman of extraordinary courage and willpower, who survived the Holocaust to become a great classical concert singer and pianist.

My first sight of this great lady was at London’s Piccadilly when I heard people around me shout, “Marlene Dietrich, Marlene Dietrich”.

I tried to look into the crowd. Was Marlene really there? Was it possible? I had read about the German actress and had watched her movie Blue Angel, which had really made me her fan.

There was no Marlene there that day. But I met another Marlene Dietrich much later. And it was Lotte Nivelli, the protagonist of this episode, who resembled Marlene very much. I still remember the day very clearly — February 13, 1991. Renowned author Harindranath Chattopadhyaya had written this wonderful book, Lotte, The Power of Love: The Life Story of Lotte Nivelli, and it was to be released at a function on February 14 in Delhi.

Lotte had come down from the US, where she had settled, to attend the function. She was 85 then.

The publisher of the book, Pravin Mittal, had asked me to interview the lady at the Imperial Hotel where she was put up. I was overwhelmed.

I arrived at the hotel around 2pm and was immediately escorted to a large room by Mittal. There I met a very handsome young man who I learnt was Lotte’s adopted son, Mickey Lotte, a famous film producer in the US.

There, sitting on one side of a big bed was Lotte herself, looking as young as she could be in her 85th year. She came up to me with a big smile on her face and kissed me on both cheeks.

How could anyone be so beautiful even at such a ripe age? She was wearing a long flowing dress with floral prints and her long auburn hair flowed down to her shoulders.

And those eyes? Those were the clearest eyes I have ever seen, as transparent as water flowing over moss-grown rocks in the bed of a mountain stream. You can see the person’s soul through those eyes.

As our conversation progressed, she laid bare her life before me. An extraordinary tale of an extraordinary women who had lost everything in her life, thrown into the infamous Auswitchz. She had seen her elder sister dragged into a gas chamber to die. Hers was a story of tragedy and triumph. I was determined to know it all.

(To be continued)