By Leah Goldstein

In the face of the terrible atrocities occurring around them, many Jews during the Holocaust were determined to maintain their humanity, and to cling fast to their acknowledged priorities—maintaining their religious, social and cultural interests, documenting their experiences, and educating their children.

These accounts are told in the new Holocaust History Museum, through the thousands of artifacts and hundreds of personal testimonies presented throughout the chronological narrative. One of the keystones of the new Holocaust History Museum, the individual perspective gives visitors a window into the daily reality confronted by the individual victims.

“Even back there, in the shadow of the chimneys, in the breaks between pain, there was something resembling happiness… For me, the happiness there will always be the most memorable experience, perhaps.”
Imre Kertész, Fateless

When Yad Vashem’s “No Child’s Play” exhibition, supported by the Walsbaum Foundation, was being compiled a decade ago, research was conducted into an extraordinary character who dedicated his life to helping children during the Holocaust: Fredy Hirsch.

“Fredy was one of the unique heroes of the Holocaust,” Museums Division Director and exhibition curator Yehudit Inbar explains. “Although he initially appeared as a young man with mainly physical talents, in the depths of the Shoah, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, he displayed maturity and leadership beyond his years. Because of him, hundreds of children were able to experience their last moments of happiness.”

Born in Aachen, Germany in 1916, Fredy (Alfred) Hirsch was a member of the Young Maccabi youth movement. Following the promulgation of the race laws, he moved to Prague, where he was an admired sports instructor, regularly holding gymnastic and sport events on the “Hagibor” (Hero) field in Prague. Fredy was in one of the first transports to the Terezin ghetto in the winter of 1941. There he became deputy head of the youth department, devoting all his time to the children incarcerated in the ghetto. He worked tirelessly to keep the youth physically and mentally fit, emphasizing independent control of their bodies and minds, through physical activity on the surface of the ghetto walls, and routine checking of the cleanliness of the children and their living environment. The enormous contribution of Fredy Hirsch in the ghetto is portrayed in the exhibit on Terezin in the new Holocaust History Museum.

In the summer of 1943, some 1,200 children arrived in Terezin from the Bialystok ghetto. In accordance with SS orders, the children were kept in isolation and prohibited from having visitors. Wishing to make personal contact with them, Fredy violated the order. He was caught, and in September 1943 deported with some 5,000 men, women and children to Birkenau. On arrival, the entire transport did not undergo the usual selektion, but was immediately placed in the “Family Camp.” This provisional camp area, which held over 17,000 prisoners deported from Terezin in September and December 1943 and May 1944, is believed to have been created by the Germans in anticipation of a visit from the Red Cross.

Fredy immediately recognized the urgent need to keep the hundreds of children occupied during the day and—claiming they were disturbing the work of the adults and the establishment of discipline in the camp—managed to persuade Dr. Josef Mengele to ask the camp commander to allow them to use one of the barracks, Block 31, as a meeting place for the older children. Ruth Bondy, who arrived at Birkenau from Terezin in December 1943, remembers Fredy as an impressive character: “There is no doubt that his outward appearance helped him in his contacts with the Germans: he was a shining example in his dress, conduct and manner of speech,” she wrote in her book, The Uprooted: Essay on the History of Czech Jews 1939-1945.

The last block on the left, opposite the infirmary barracks, Block 31 was in clear view of the crematoria chimneys. Despite the impossible conditions, Fredy took care of food, heating and social activities for some 500 children, aged between 8 and 14. They were looked after and encouraged by a handpicked team of young counselors who determined to maintain the children’s physical and mental health through a range of activities.

Mausi (Marianne) Hermann-Grant, Wall Drawings from the Children’s Block, reconstruction from memory, July 1997. Mausi was a counselor in the children’s block.

The children dedicated time every day to exercising, washing and checking for lice—all vital for their physical survival. “If preserving physical health was an important part of educating Jewish youth in wartime Czechoslovakia,” remembers Bondy, “here it was the main, most crucial objective… The counselors were obliged to check the cleanliness of the children as well as their bunks and eating utensils.” The children received thicker soup than the regular prisoners, plus extra rations Fredy obtained for them, such as noodles cooked in milk, white bread, cake crumbs and food from parcels sent to already deceased prisoners. The extra food came irregularly, but combined with the strict cleanliness, was enough to ensure that the rate of death of “natural causes” (sickness and starvation)—about 22% in the Family Camp as a whole—was next to zero among the children. In addition, Fredy forbade the counselors from eating any of the food meant for the children; breaking that rule meant immediate banishment from the block. “Unlike the norm outside the block, inside there was no stealing, no abuse, and no acts of violence by the stronger against the weak,” explains Bondy.

At Fredy’s request, counselors Dina Babbit-Gottlieb and Mausi Hermann-Grant decorated the windowless barrack by painting pictures of Eskimos, Indians, Africans, countryside scenes and favorite cartoon characters on the walls.
Though formally prohibited by the Germans, the counselors also arranged educational activities, including games, stories and plays. They also set up a mini library of sorts, comprising history, science and storybooks, as well as several improvised collections of poems and songs. A memory game, invented by counselor Hana Fischel, would last for hours, and helped the children develop familiarity with historical figures, increase their power of memory, and maintain their interest.

Dita (Polak) Kraus, Sketches of the Interior of the Children’s Block, duplicates. Dita, who was an assistant counselor and librarian in the children’s block, is wearing dark socks and seated next to the bookshelf.

“There was no fixed syllabus for learning,” Bondy recalls. “The counselors taught from their experiences and strengths—from their ability to interest the children, keep them busy, and educate them with no learning aids other than their own memories.” The children were also taken outside for games and “treasure hunts,” collecting scraps of paper they would later use for craft activities. They especially loved the group singing activities, organized by Avi Fischer, with the French children’s song Allouette a particular favorite.

“The children loved to be in the block,” says Bondy. “The counselors never asked themselves why they should teach them the alphabet, geography, the rules of Czech grammar or about the Earth’s gravity, with death lurking at the door. Education was necessary because their students needed it. But it was also a way to forget… The block had other advantages too: a warm barrack, far away from the abusive kapos; the closeness of friendship; permission to ‘parade’ without standing in the rain and frost; and various small delights—the chance to fix a torn piece of clothing, friendly discussions, and a feeling of shelter and refuge.” A small enclosure in the block was also used as a meeting place for the Auschwitz underground.

The highlight of their week was every Sabbath eve, when the children and counselors staged performances and plays. The most memorable of these was a Christmas 1943 production of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” for which the children rehearsed for many weeks, creating the scripts, songs, sets and costumes. They performed it in front of a large audience that even included SS guards. According to spectator Harry Kraus (then 12 years old): “Fredy Hirsch was the man and living spirit behind the enterprise.”

In his article in Yad Vashem Studies Vol. 24, Shimon Adler describes the daily life in Block 31 as “an island of stability in the sea of constant changes and traumas the children had to endure… The children and staff there were able to live for the moment, distancing themselves from the pain and terror reigning outside.” Yet the existence of Block 31 was not enough to ensure their survival. On 8 March 1944, the children, most of the other family members and the counselors of the September transport—including Fredy—were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In their memoirs, the few survivors of the Family Camp repeatedly recall the importance of friendship, mutual assistance, self-endangerment to help a friend—and the image of Fredy Hirsh. “All these qualities,” writes Bondy, “helped them hold firm… and after the war to return to their studies, gain employment and build families—and not lose their faith in humanity.”

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