Tech Topics - Summer 2008 - (Page 15) LivingHistory PING KEE AITH HE F T By Kimberly Link-Wills or Hirsch’s works hon Architect Benjamintims of persecution family, religion, vic GARY MEEK O n the Sunday following Passover, the young and the old, Jews and gentiles, come together at Greenwood Cemetery to remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust. On May 4, the 43rd annual Day of Remembrance at the Atlanta cemetery, a plaque was placed at the Memorial to the Six Million identifying it as a 2008 designate to the National Register of Historic Places. “Usually something has to be at least 50 years old before it can be named to the registry,” said the memorial’s designer, Benjamin Hirsch, BS 57, Arch 58, chuckling as he added, “I think they wanted to do it before I was gone.” Hirsch has shared much of himself during his lifetime. In 2000, Mercer University Press published the autobiography “Hearing a Different Drummer: A Holocaust Survivor’s Search for Identity.” He followed it with a prequel, “Home Is Where You Find It,” in 2006. His life story began with a dramatic start. “When I was 4 months old, a young upstart named Adolf Hitler came to power.” The infant was the fifth child born to a Jewish family living in Frankfurt, Germany. His father, dentist Hermann Hirsch, was a leader in the Jewish community. Kristallnacht, the “night of the broken glass,” occurred on Nov. 9, 1938, when more than 1,000 synagogues throughout Germany and Nazi-occupied lands were burned. “That day I witnessed my synagogue being destroyed by mobs and the mobs being protected by police. I was 6 years old. I was standing there with my older cousin and we watched as these hoodlums went in and out of the place with Molotov cocktails,” Hirsch said. “They took out the holy scrolls of the Torah. They opened them up and pierced them on the pickets of a fence. Benjamin Hirsch’s Memorial to the Six Million, erected in Greenwood Cemetery in 1965 to honor Holocaust victims, has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. “It’s amazing that I still have a vivid memory of that. I was a little boy, but it stayed with me. Many people have said that maybe my desire to design synagogues came from that.” The little boy’s mind erased what he witnessed the next day, but Hirsch has heard it recounted so many times over the last half a century that he can recite it himself. “They came to arrest my father on November 10,” he began. “They came to the door. My mother was holding my baby sister. There were three men. One was wearing a trench coat and a hat. The other two were in uniform. They had police dogs with them, German shepherds. They had weapons of course. “The man in the trench coat appeared to be in charge and asked to speak to Dr. Hirsch. My mother, TECHTOPICS sensing a problem, said, ‘Mr. Hirsch is not home, but leave me your card. I’ll make sure he calls you as soon as he gets in.’ This man, he knew that my father was there. They’d been casing the house. So he grabbed the baby from my mother’s arms, threw her on the floor, pulled out his pistol and aimed it at my little sister and said, ‘You have 30 seconds to have Dr. Hirsch appear. If he doesn’t appear, then I will shoot the baby first.’” The gun was trained on the older children, including Benjamin, one by one. The man in the trench coat threatened to shoot them one by one. He would save the mother, Matilda Hirsch, for last. “My father was in the back and he heard all that and he ran out and gave himself up. That’s the last time I ever saw my father,” Hirsch said. Matilda Hirsch searched for a way to protect her children. The two youngest, ages 6 months and 18 months, stayed with her. The five oldest were put on a train bound for Paris in December 1938. “We never at that time thought we would not see our parents again,” said Hirsch, explaining that once they arrived in Paris, his two older sisters went to stay with an uncle, and his two older brothers went with a cousin. Another uncle could not fulfill his obligation to take in the 6-year-old boy but found a couple from his synagogue who could. He was safe for a time. “It became apparent that Hitler’s armies were coming to Paris,” he continued. “It meant that the Jews were in big trouble.” Before his foster family fled to the countryside, they found a children’s home that would take in Hirsch. He later was moved to Chateau de Magillier, his home for more than two years. Hirsch’s brothers sent word in May 1941 for him to join them. They were going to attempt to escape Europe and sail to the United States. He traveled with a group by bus to Marseilles, where he was to meet up with his brothers. He went through the free hot soup and bread lines so many times that he developed a horrible stomachache, one that those securing passage for the escapees worried was an attack of appendicitis. Hirsch was barred from traveling. His brothers sailed for America. Hirsch was sent to yet another children’s home, but this one housed his two older sisters. Three months later, they were transported together by train to Spain. “We got to Madrid after dark to make sure espionage elements from Nazi Germany would not spy us. We stayed in a convent in Madrid, and they got us up early in the morning so we could leave before the sun came up for the same reason. Continued on 16 15 | SUMMER 2008
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.