JGANovDec10.pdf - The Jewish Georgian

November-December 2010 THE JEWISH GEORGIAN Page 27
The Breman
From page 25
Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust
Museum by Benjamin Hirsch, child survivor,
who gave a talk there. And I almost didn’t
attend.
With temperatures in the 70s and a clear
blue sky, Sunday, October 3, was the kind of
day to roam outside. I really wanted to visit
the North Georgia State Fair to watch the elephant
and tiger acts and enjoy the homegrown
attractions. Then I found out that Ben
was speaking as part of The Breman’s
Bearing Witness program, and I felt guilty.
How does a fair compare to a child survivor’s
eyewitness account of the Holocaust?
I decided to skip the fair this year and join
around 200 others in the auditorium at The
Selig Center to hear the story of Ben Hirsch,
who went on to be the designer of The
Breman Museum and architect of The
Memorial to the Six Million in Greenwood
Cemetery, which is on the National Register
of Historic Places. By the time Ben’s speech
and PowerPoint presentation were over, I
knew that I made the right choice. Ben was a
child who fought elephants and tigers not at a
fair but in a real-life arena of hatred and fear.
And with the help of G-d, his devoted mother,
and many others in France and Atlanta, he
survived.
Much of what Ben spoke about appears
in his book, Home Is Where You Find It, published
in 2006, but hearing him relate his
story with passion, pain, and even humor
deepened my commitment to keep the memory
of the Holocaust alive—not just for those
who perished and others, like Ben, who lived
through it, but for all Jews, because it wasn’t
just they. It was we, too.
From the moment Benjamin Hirsch was
born in Frankfurt, Germany, in September
1932, he knew nothing but fear. The 5th child
of Hermann and Mathilda Hirsch, he was
told to never go out alone. Sometimes he didn’t
listen; that’s when he was attacked by
boys dressed in soldiers’ uniforms. Often, he
ducked into a house, any house, calling out
“Mama!” Little did he know that after
Kristallnacht, Ben, at the age of six, would be
without his mama, who would send him and
his four older siblings on a Kindertransport to
save their lives. He never saw his mother
again but has made it his life’s work to find
out what happened to both of his parents and
his youngest brother and sister.
Ben said the situation in Frankfurt was
bad for his family before Kristallnacht. His
father, a leader in the Jewish community, was
a dentist. “Before discrimination, we did
well,” said Ben, explaining that the Germans
paid doctors and dentists for medical care
through heavy taxes. “The health care system
would be the envy of Barak Obama,” he
joked. But all that changed when the government
announced that Jewish medical
providers wouldn’t get paid.
Overnight, Ben’s father’s practice suffered.
“We couldn’t put food on the table for
seven,” said Ben, so older brother Asher and
sister Flo were sent temporarily to family
members in Holland. While others started to
Ben Hirsch and Jane Leavy, executive
director at The Breman Museum
leave Germany, Hermann Hirsch stayed,
because he thought that the situation would
improve. “My father had this love for the
Jewish community of Frankfurt,” Ben
explained.
In September 1935, Dr. Hirsch’s dental
practice picked up when the Nuremberg laws
forbade Jewish patients to be treated by non-
Jewish doctors. Soon, Asher and Flo came
home, and two more children were born to
the Hirsch family: Werner and Roslene.
By July 1938, FDR was receiving communications
from people concerned about
emigration for the Jews. He called for a convention
at the resort Evian on the Swiss border
and made a deal that the U.S. would
match in number any nation that took in
Jewish refugees. Hitler said that Jews could
leave for $250 each, but only with the clothes
on their backs. Dr. Heinrich Neumann, a
Viennese Jew already incarcerated, was
elected to give the case for saving the Jews.
He spoke eloquently, and when he was finished,
every nation wanted him, but no one
else. Only the Dominican Republic offered to
take in 1,000 Jews. According to Ben, Hitler
used the nations’ lack of interest in saving the
Jews in a speech saying, “The nations want to
berate me, but not take them in.”
One of Ben’s most painful memories
was Kristallnacht, when, as a six-year-old, he
saw fire flaring out of the windows of his
synagogue and hoodlums opening up the
Torah and piercing it on a picket fence. First,
backing away from the site, he and his 14year-old
cousin ran home. His father had
already removed the outdoor sign with his
name and a Jewish star on it, which all Jews
were required to place in front of their
homes. It was too late. A Nazi officer was
watching the house for several hours. When
Ben was older, he learned that the officer
came that day for his father, but when his
mother said he wasn’t in, the Nazi grabbed
his baby sister from his mother’s arms and
threw her to the ground. Then he threatened
to kill her and each of the children if his
father didn’t come out of hiding. Hearing
this, his father immediately appeared. That
was the last time Ben saw him.
His mother, realizing the seriousness of
the situation, made arrangements for her five
oldest children to board a Kindertransport to
France. Ben remembers that, for each piece
of clothing she packed for him, a tear fell
from his mother’s eyes. When finished, she
placed all the bags in a baby carriage and
with her children, ages 6-13, walked two
miles to the train station. Years later, Ben
found out that a 12-year-old boy on the
Kindertransport, an “amateur psychologist”
as Ben calls him, watched all the mothers
place their children on the transport. He was
curious about so many mothers sending off
their children, knowing that they might never
see them again. He decided to focus on Ben’s
mother because she was placing five instead
of one, two, or, at most, three children on the
Kindertransport. Much later in America, Ben
connected with this young man, who told
him that as the train took off, Ben’s mama
waved and then fainted on the platform.
In France, Ben was sent to live with the
Samuels family; they were kind to him, but
as Jews, they, too, had to flee. Then he lived
in different Oeuvre De Secours Aux Enfants
(OSE) Jewish children’s homes. At one of the
OSE homes, the staff noticed how thin Ben
was, so they sent him off to a camp to fatten
him up. But the camp turned out to be one of
the worst experiences of his young life.
Those in charge tore off his tzistzis and cut
them up in front of him. They tried to make
him eat ham; he refused. As when his father
was taken away, what happened next was
blocked from his memory. (As a grown man,
he read a book explaining that the counselors
were trying to save the boys’ lives by taking
the Jew out of them, which gave him some
understanding of their behavior.)
Back at the OSE, Ben received a
telegram inviting him to escape to America
along with his older brothers Asher and Jack.
At the gathering of the children in Marseille,
Ben had many helpings of hot soup and bread
and awoke in the middle of the night with a
terrible stomachache. The attending medic
said it was appendicitis, and Ben couldn’t
board the train to Spain with his brothers. As
soon as Asher and Jack left, Ben’s stomach
was better. A few months later, he was invited
to join the last group of children headed
for America. This time, he ate only one helping
of soup and bread.
He described how moving through
Spain, a country that collaborated with the
Nazis, was oppressive. Once the train arrived
in Portugal, Ben felt a difference in the air.
From there, he took a ship to America.
Ben Hirsch signing his book
When Ben arrived in Atlanta, he was
nine years old and 43 pounds. He lived with
many people, including the Bregmans, the
Hershbergs, the Ungers, Ida Goncher, and
then his sister Sara Shartar after she married.
He attended Georgia Tech before going into
the Army, which allowed him to travel back
to Europe and find out more about his family.
That part of his life is highlighted in his
first book, Marching to a Different Drummer.
At the Breman, Ben told several other
stories, including one about a nurse who
wanted to see him right away on visiting day
at his daughter’s camp in the Catskills. The
nurse told Ben that he saved her life. When
Ben couldn’t go to America with his brothers
because of his misdiagnosed appendicitis,
she took his place. She said that was her last
chance, because she was soon turning 16 and
would not be allowed to go.
This past May, Ben and his wife, Jackie,
were invited back to Frankfurt to attend a
stone laying ceremony, part of an effort
known as the Stolpersteine Initiative, in front
of his old house. (Stolpersteine is German for
“stumbling-block.”) Here, a German woman
and two couples dedicated stones as they
were cemented in front of the house that Ben
and his family lived in before the Holocaust
tore apart their family. The engraved metal
plaques on the stones bear the names of his
parents, sister, and brother; they also tell
when and where they died. Jackie said that
the couples were honored to support this
effort. “They were horrified by what their
country did,” she said, “and they just want us
to know it wasn’t them.”
Yes, it may not be the Germans of today,
but we are the Jews who survived the
Holocaust—even those who are thousands of
miles away, even those who weren’t born yet.
“Should we be fearful in America?” asked
someone during the question-and-answer
session.
“We should always be aware,” said Ben.
Then he smiled, and many people, including
his children and grandchildren, came up from
the audience to express their appreciation for
his moving presentation.