There are words in penal codes to describe what really happened to Fredy Hirsch that afternoon in 1944. Sometimes, narrative fiction reveals truths that can’t be told any other way.
Increasingly, other testimonies contradict the suicide theory that can be found in the official profiles of Hirsch. Michael Honey, a family camp survivor who worked as an errand boy for the medical team, casts doubt on Rosenberg’s testimony in his memoir when he speaks of what happened on March 8, 1944: “He was given an overdose of Luminal when he asked for a pill because of a headache.”
I hope this book also serves as a vindication of the figure of Fredy Hirsch, somewhat tarnished by the false idea that he voluntarily took his own life. As a result of this notion, his integrity in decisive moments has been questioned. Fredy Hirsch did not commit suicide. He would never have abandoned his children. He was a captain; he would have gone down with his ship. This is how he should be remembered: as a fighter of extraordinary valor.
And, naturally, this book is a homage to Dita, from whom I have learned so much.
The librarian of Block 31 continues to live in Netanya and travels to spend a few weeks each year in her tiny apartment in Prague. And she’ll keep doing it as long as her health allows. She is still a woman of unimaginable curiosity, astuteness, kindness, and integrity. Until now, I hadn’t believed in heroes, but I now know they exist: Dita is one of them.
WHAT HAPPENED TO …
RUDI ROSENBERG
After the war, Rudi Rosenberg changed his name to Rudi Vrba. Following his escape from Auschwitz, he hastened to dictate a preliminary report for Jewish leaders in the city of Zilina about what was really happening to the people deported to Auschwitz. Its contents bore no resemblance to the lies of the Nazis. The report was sent to Budapest, but some of the senior Jewish leaders ignored it, and in May 1944, the Nazis began to transport up to twelve thousand Hungarian Jews a day to Auschwitz. When Rudi reached Britain, he and his fellow escapee Fred Wetzler wrote another, more detailed report that served to inform the world of the terrible truth of what was happening in the concentration camps. This document was one of the pieces of evidence used at the Nuremberg trials. After the war, Rosenberg was decorated. He studied chemistry at Charles University (in Prague) and became a respected professor in the field of neurochemistry. He moved to Canada, where he died in 2006. His bitter criticism of prominent members of the Hungarian-Jewish community, who would subsequently play a key role in the founding of the State of Israel, caused certain sectors of that state to question for decades both his testimony and Rudi himself as a person. To this day he remains a controversial figure there.
ELISABETH VOLKENRATH
Elisabeth Volkenrath was a qualified hairdresser by profession, but her affiliation with the Nazi party led to her enlisting with the SS. She undertook a period of training in the Ravensbrück camp, and in 1943 was posted to Auschwitz as an SS Aufseherin, or female guard. In November 1944, she was promoted to SS Oberaufseherin, or head female guard, and in this position, she ordered an increased number of executions. Early in 1945 she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen as supervisor. When the Allies liberated the camp, she was arrested by British troops and put on trial as part of the process to determine the responsibilities of the Bergen-Belsen guards. As a result, she was condemned to death by hanging and was executed on December 13, 1945, in the town of Hamelin.
RUDOLF H?SS
Rudolf H?ss, the Kommandant of Auschwitz, received a strict Catholic upbringing. His father even wanted him to become an ordained priest. In the end, H?ss opted for the army: order and hierarchy fascinated him. During his term as Kommandant, between one and two million people were killed. When the war ended, H?ss escaped from the encirclement of the Allies hunting for major war criminals by using a false identity that suggested he was an ordinary soldier. He worked as a farmer for almost a year, until the Allies forced his wife to reveal his whereabouts and he was arrested. He was tried in Poland and condemned to death. While in jail, before he was executed, he wrote his memoirs, in which he did not deny the hundreds of thousands of crimes he had committed, and justified them by declaring that, given his military rank, he was obliged to obey the orders he received. He was even proud of his organizational skills in managing a death machine as complex as the one at Auschwitz. He was hanged in Auschwitz I, and the gallows still stand where the sentence was carried out.
ADOLF EICHMANN
Adolf Eichmann was one of the primary ideologues of the so-called Final Solution to exterminate the Jewish race. He took charge of the logistics involved in the deportations to the concentration camps. He was also the architect of the Judenr?te, or Jewish councils, which collaborated in the deportations. Eichmann was captured by American troops at the end of the war, but he passed himself off as Otto Eckmann and they didn’t realize he was one of the most wanted Nazis. After hiding in Germany and traveling through Italy, Eichmann boarded a ship to Argentina in 1950. There, he gathered his family together and lived under a false name, working as a machine operator in a car factory. In 1960, thanks to information gathered by the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, an elite group of the Mossad (the Israeli intelligence service) found him in Buenos Aires. In a daring operation, they arrested Eichmann in the street, bundled him into a car, and headed for the airport. From there, he was secretly taken out of the country in a plane belonging to the Israeli airline El Al, by pretending he was a drunk aircraft mechanic. The incident gave rise to a bitter diplomatic dispute between Argentina and Israel. SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem and condemned to death. The sentence was carried out on June 1, 1962.
PETR GINZ