The Teacher of Auschwitz: The previously untold story of gay WWII hero Fredy Hirsch

“My name is Fredy Hirsch. I am 28 years old. I am a teacher, I am a dreamer, I have loved and laughed, cried and almost died a thousand times. My name is Fredy Hirsch. Please, be so kind as to remember my name.”

The poignant opening lines to The Teacher of Auschwitz grip readers’ hearts and prepares them for what may come in a new bestselling novel about a young, gay, German Jew imprisoned in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, inspired by a true story.

This previously untold excavation into the inner life of Fredy Hirsch delves deep into the psyche of the beautiful young athlete and potential Olympian caught up in the Holocaust who refused to be a bystander to evil. Born in Aachen, Germany to a butcher and his wife, his life was tipped upside down first by the death of his father, then by his mother all but abandoning him, and finally by the rise of the Nazis under Hitler.

A teenage virgin struggling with his sexuality, Fredy sought solace in athletics, the great outdoors, and the scouts. When the Nazis tightened their grip on Jews and those they considered ‘impure’, gay bars were raided and men imprisoned for a glance or for having ‘lustful intentions.’ Some were tortured or sent to concentration camps and others faced mandatory castration, which became a lawful punishment.

Terrified of the consequences if denounced for his first kiss, Fredy recalls: ‘Unbidden, a line from Leviticus 20:13 leapt into my head: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death.” My childhood rabbi had thundered those words across the synagogue until they stuck to the flypaper of my brain…. and that’s how I felt – an abomination of Nature because nothing seemed more unnatural to me than what I was feeling. Yet, no matter how much I tried, each time my mind flashed back to the moment Carl’s lips touched mine, my body responded with the same physiological impulse.’

With the help of his kind sports coach, Fredy fled Germany as a teenage refugee and crossed the border to Czechoslovakia, a liberal democracy where he hoped he’d be safe. When the Germans invaded and Fredy’s life was in peril once more, he turned down the chance to escape and threw himself back into youth leadership. With the blessing of the leader of the Jewish elders, he set up an ‘oasis of hope’ on the outskirts of Prague where he organised mass sports events for children struggling under the Nuremberg Laws banning them from public life. Several hundred children regularly flocked to what became known as ‘Fredy-land,’ their only respite from fear.

Time and again, the brave 23-year-old stood up to the Nazis to seek privileges for the youngsters who came to worship him as their moral and spiritual leader. Ironically, the SS admired Fredy for his chutzpah and his Aryan physique. He spoke high German and had a militaristic bearing, saluting officers and staring them out before making his demands. One later told him, ‘You know, Hirsch, if you hadn’t been born a Jew you’d have made an excellent member of the Waffen-SS.’

With the help of first Jenda, the junior doctor he’d fallen for soon after arriving in Czechoslovakia, and then Kurt, a journalist and member of the resistance, Fredy had to leave both men when he was sent to the Terezin ghetto north of Prague. His mission was to help establish the vast garrison town for the hundreds of thousands of Jews the Nazis started to send to what became a pit of despair and a transit camp to Auschwitz.

Seeing the appalling conditions, Fredy immediately set about placing the children in special kinderheims where he could supervise their hygiene to protect them from diseases and arrange lessons in everything from art to history, languages to songs. In a place where it could be fatal to challenge an SS officer, Fredy insisted on meetings with the German High Command to demand that the children be allowed bigger rations, fresh air and exercise. But he overstepped the mark when he defied orders to comfort a new arrival of orphans and was sent to Auschwitz for his crime.

In that hell on earth, Fredy immediately realised the danger they were all in and knew that if he didn’t do what he could to protect the children then they’d be sent to the gas chamber or die of disease. This extract from the book explains how he did it:-

‘After roll call, the SS officer I’d dubbed Eyebrows went to take my report on the numbers of dead but I held onto the form that Nazi efficiency demanded. “I can be of some assistance to you, Herr Obersturmführer,” I told him, locking eyes across the sheet of paper. “I have a solution to the problem of traumatised children disrupting the camp and spreading disease. It will simultaneously raise morale and improve discipline.’ The man who frequently expressed exasperation every time toddlers wandered from the ranks to jump in muddy puddles or tug at SS breeches, glared at me murderously. After looking as if he were deciding whether to shoot me on the spot or send me to be gassed, he said, ‘You have five minutes.’”

Through that first audacious request, Fredy was able to set up a Children’s Block in the shadow of the chimneys that constantly belched acrid human smoke. The block became a haven in the darkness, a heaven in hell, and a place where hundreds of children could escape the overcrowded barracks in which people were dying daily. There was no paper or pens, no toys, and only a handful of books, but Fredy enlisted professors and teachers imprisoned in the camp to teach by storytelling. He asked a young artist to paint Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on the walls in brightly coloured paints and crafted little plays for the children, making costumes out of cardboard and sacking.

SS officers, including the head physician Dr Josef Mengele, who between them sent thousands of men, women and children to their deaths almost daily, soon heard about the makeshift school in the heart of the Nazi’s most efficient extermination camp and began drifting in with sweets for those they planned to murder. They even came to watch the plays, moist-eyed with memories of families back home.

Fredy hid his revulsion to negotiate with them for wood for the fire, better vegetables for a thicker soup, or clothing from the vast quantity stripped from the tens of thousands gassed. Sacrificing his own needs and desires to try to save the children, his only comfort was the arrival of Kurt, who warned Fredy that time was running out and that he needed to save himself.

Fredy’s fate is revealed in the book but after the war his name was ground into the Auschwitz clay by Eastern Europe’s new Communist rulers who branded him a homosexual and a collaborator. In the 80 years since Auschwitz was liberated, an anniversary which was so movingly marked last week, the name of Fredy Hirsch was forgotten by all but a few of the surviving children who worshipped him still. This book rights that injustice at last.

The Teacher of Auschwitz is out now in the UK, published by Zaffre, and in Italy as Il Maestro Invisibile by Edizioni Piemme. Available for pre-order in the US and in 15 other countries.

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