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    My Voice: Ernest Hirsch
    My Voice: Ernest Hirsch
    My Voice: Ernest Hirsch
    Ebook72 pages27 minutes

    My Voice: Ernest Hirsch

    By The Fed

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    About this ebook

    Ernest Hirsch was born in April 1925 in Neidenburg, East Prussia. When Hitler came to power in 1933, East Prussia was taken over by Nazis and his family’s business was boycotted.

    After moving to Berlin, Ernest witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht in 1938 when his synagogue was set on fire. Ernest and his siblings left for England on the Kindertransport and were placed with different families. Unfortunately, his mother never managed to escape.

    After the war, Ernest served as an officer in the Royal Scots Fusiliers and had a successful career in the textile industry after studying at Leeds University. Ernest and his first wife settled in Manchester in 1970, where they had three children. His wife sadly passed away in 1992 and Ernest later remarried.

    Ernest’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherManchester University Press
    Release dateSep 10, 2024
    ISBN9781526186331
    My Voice: Ernest Hirsch

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      Book preview

      My Voice - The Fed

      Chapter 1

      My family and early life in Neidenburg

      I was born Ernst Gerhard Hirsch on 11 April 1925 in Neidenburg, East Prussia (now Nidzica in Poland). I have two siblings. My brother Hans Herbert Simon was born in 1929 in Königsberg, which was the main city in East Prussia. Today it is called Kaliningrad and is a Russian enclave on the Baltic. Simon was named after my maternal grandfather, but he was always known as Herbert. My sister Ruth was born in Neidenburg in 1931.

      My father Erich was born in Bischofsburg in 1890. My paternal grandmother was called Klara and my grandfather was Jacob. He founded an outfitters and haberdashery shop in Neidenburg, as a family business, which my father later ran. My father had one sister, Betty and one brother called Willy. I remember them vaguely but, don’t forget, I was still very young.

      My mother Helene was born on 28 October 1900, in a small town called Liebstadt in East Prussia. It is now known as Milakowo, in Poland. She was the second of four sisters. The eldest was called Beppa (Bertha) and the two other sisters were Jenny and Grete, short for Margarete, who was the youngest. Jenny married a man called Durra, but I never knew him. My maternal grandparents were Simon and Fanny Schulz, a real good German name!

      A family photo of six people. On the left side of the photo stands a young lady wearing a light-coloured short-sleeved shirt. She is holding the arm of an older lady, who is wearing a dress and sitting on a chair with her hands clasped together. On the right side stands a young lady wearing a short-sleeved dress and a watch. She is holding the arm of an older gentleman, who is sitting on a chair wearing a black coat and glasses. Two young ladies stand in the middle wearing dresses.

      1 Standing L to R: my mother, Helene, and her three sisters, Beppa, Jenny and Grete Seated: my maternal grandparents, Fanny and Simon Schulz

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