I had a most extraordinary encounter with Gideon Klein. In one of the barrack-theatres in Terezín, Gideon and I found ourselves alone there, and as I was about to leave so that he could practise the piano, he invited me to stay. There, in that strange environment of the camp, this exceptionally talented young musician performed Chopin, just for me. In this book, you will read about this impromptu private recital, and the memory of that event remains as clear to me today as it was almost 80 years ago. As an actress taking part in many activities in the camp, I became acquainted with numerous prisoners who were central to Terezín's cultural life. From Gideon's friend, the theatre director Gustav Schorsch, who, you will read, was murdered alongside Gideon in Fürstengrube, to the pianist Alice Herz-Sommer with whom I met weekly in London up until her death in 2014, via the many others who make appearances in this book. All of them ensured that, despite appalling circumstances, the arts flourished during imprisonment.

I was also fortunate enough to know Gideon's sister, Lisa Kleinová, who, as the book details, played such an important part in her brother's life. Lisa and I were in Auschwitz-Birkenau together, and we were on the same death-march from that place. I was eventually liberated at Bergen-Belsen, and Lisa, miraculously, managed to find her way back to Prague. We kept in touch with one another until her death in 1999.

This book is the first full-length biography of Gideon Klein in a quarter of a century. Not only does it document Gideon's activities in Terezín, but it is the first piece of scholarship to detail his life, and that of his family, in Prague and Přerov. It is a fitting tribute, and an appropriate homage, to a lovely person, and a wonderful musician who undoubtedly would have become renowned, if a cruel regime had not ended his life so pitifully early.