Wikipedia: Born into a Jewish family in Bulgaria, Sofia, Weissenberg began taking piano lessons at the age of three from Pancho Vladigerov, a Bulgarian composer. He gave his first public performance at the age of eight.
In 1941, he and his mother tried to escape from German-occupied Bulgaria for Turkey, but they were caught and imprisoned in a makeshift concentration camp in Bulgaria for three months. One day, a German guard – who had enjoyed hearing Alexis play Schubert on the accordion – hurriedly took him and his mother to the train station, throwing the accordion to him through the window. The guard told them, “Good luck,” in German; the next day, they safely arrived in Istanbul.
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