KRAKOW, Poland, July 16 (UPI) -- Famed Polish pianist and Holocaust survivor Natalia Karp has died at the age of 96.
Karp died on July 9, The Los Angeles Times reported Monday citing British news outlets.
The Krakow-born concert pianist performed with the London Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, among others, during a career that lasted until she was in her 90s.
Having played piano since she was four, Karp famously escaped execution and saved her sister's life in 1943 by entertaining Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Plasgow work camp in Poland, at his birthday party.
"I had not played since 1939, and my fingers were stiff," Karp told the Independent of London in 2005. "I sat down and started to play Chopin's Nocturne because I have always found it very sad."
When she finished, Goeth declared, "She shall live."
A student of Berlin pianist Arthur Schnabel, Karp said she replied, "Not without my sister," and Goeth spared her as well.
Liberated the day after V-E Day in 1945, Karp and her sister made their way home to Krakow, where she began performing for Polish radio and then pursued a long and storied career as a concert pianist.
She is survived by two daughters.
