Meet the pianist from Poland who is still playing at 108
Comments
She's the pianist from Poland who is still playing every day aged 108.
Wanda Zarzycka, one of the country's oldest and most talented residents, still glides her fingers over the keys after overcoming a setback nearly three decades ago.
Zarzycka broke her hands when she was 80 years old and was told by doctors that she would never play the piano again.
The centenarian is a former dancer who fell in love with music as a young girl growing up in Lviv, now in western Ukraine.
In 1931 she graduated from Lviv's music conservatory, but soon after when World War II broke out, she was forced to stop playing.
The piano was brought to Krakow in 1944, five years after Zarzycka's family fled there from Lviv, which was then a Polish city occupied by the Soviet army.
The ornate wooden instrument was passed down to her from her mother who received it as a wedding gift.
It remains Zarzycka's most valuable possession in a tiny apartment in Krakow, southern Poland.
