The Fearless Fredy Hirsch

When you travel to Europe on Jewish heritage tours, one of the lessons that you will immediately learn is that World War II was a dark time for the Jewish people. But despite this, many heroes emerged from the darkness to give light and hope to their fellow Jews. One such hero was Fredy Hirsch.

Alfred Fredy Hirsch (born February 11, 1916, Aachen - March 8, 1944, Auschwitz) was a Jewish educator, athlete and Zionist. He supported the thousands of children in the Terezín Ghetto and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps until his death.

Fredy was born in February 11, 1916 in German Aachen to a German emancipated Jewish family. His father died when he was only 10 years old. From early childhood he was an athlete and a scout. He worked in the Jewish societies Makabi Hacair and Jüdischer Pfadfinderbund Deutschland (German Jewish Scout Movement).

After Hitler's entry into power in 1933, part of his family managed to emigrate to Bolivia while Fredy stayed in Germany and began engaging in a Zionist movement aimed at getting as many Jews into Palestine as possible. He worked in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main until he was forced to emigrate to Czechoslovakia in 1935.

In Czechoslovakia, he participated in Zionist movements, sports education and youth work and preparation for travel to the "Promised Land". He worked mainly in Prague, Brno and Ostrava. He has led various Scout camps, but has also trained with children and theaters and various cultural performances. After the Nazi occupation of the Czechoslovakia and the introduction of discriminatory measures, the Jews were forbidden to stay in public spaces. One of the few exceptions in Prague-Strašnice was the Hagibor course (Hebrew for "Hero"), where Hirsch organized an oasis of "normal" life for the discriminated Jewish children.


On December 4, 1941 Fredy was sent by the Aufbaukommando II together with two dozen workers of the Jewish community to the Ghetto in Theresienstadt. They were to prepare the 18th Century fortress town for the incoming Jewish transports from all over Europe.

He actively participated on the education of children between 5 and 15 years of age, leading PE activites, scavenger hunts, chidlren’s theatre and helped to publish children’s daily magazine Vedem (“We lead”). Freddy was a publicly known figure in the ghetto. He was beloved by all the children and respected by the Germans for his “Aryan” manners, tall, muscularly, athletic figure, his modern fashion and the polished, shiny boots he always wore.

Fredy Hirsch was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on September 6, 1943, in the so-called Terezín family camp. Thanks to his confident performance and courage, he even respected some SS members, even though he was both a Jew and a homosexual. In Auschwitz he managed to establish a children's block for about 500 children. As soon as the resistance movement in the camp began to receive information that all Jews from the September transports were to be gassed, Hirsch was identified as the leader for a possible uprising.

On March 7, 1944, 3791 men, women and children had been transferred from a family camp to a quarantine camp (BIIa) to the Auschwitz resistance movement Rudolf Vrba to contact Hirsch. He tried to convince him of the need to instigate a rebellion, to which the members of Sonderkommando would join in.

On the morning of March 8, Vrba reunited with Hirsch and confirmed to him that the liquidation of the Jews from the September transports in the gas chambers was certain. Fredy Hirsch took an hour to think, and when Vrba returned, he found him dying of poisoning. Dr. Kleinmann (a French Jew of Polish descent) told Vrba that he was probably poisoned by barbiturates. He was later cremated that evening in the Birkenau crematorium, along with the thousands more dead people from the Terezin camp.

The circumstances of Hirsch's death are not yet fully clarified. Some Holocaust survivors who personally knew Hirsch deny the version of suicide.

Fredy's homosexuality was known to many people in Theresienstadt and in Auschwitz, and was notable considering the prejudice towards homosexuals at that time. Despite this, his actions in the face of great despair was admired by many to this day.

The Storied Town Of Jičín

Jičín is one of Bohemia’s most fascinating historic towns. It began as a relatively unimportant market settlement during the Thirty Years War. Later on it grew into a major economic, political and cultural center of the kingdom, the capital of the Duchy of Friedland.

Albrecht Wallenstein

The Bohemian warlord Albrecht of Wallenstein had his seat there and his tolerant reign led to a tremendous boom of the Jewish community under the leadership of Yaakov Bashevi von Treuenburg. A significant portion of the town still includes the former Jewish ghetto with a Jewish street, the Jičín Synagogue and Jewish school, as well as a dozen Jewish houses.

The earliest records of Jewish settlement in Jičín date back to the 14th century. In 1362, there was a mention of a Židovská (“Jewish”) Street. Other reports from the 14th and 15th centuries show that the local Jews owned buildings in various parts of town and could freely buy and sell them. Apparently by the early 16th century, the Jewish settlement was centered on today’s Židovská Street. During the expulsion of the Jews from Bohemia in the middle of the 15th century, all of Jičín’s Jews were forced to leave the town.

Jičín’s Jewish community was re-established under Albrecht of Wallenstein. The community’s guardian and protector was the duke’s financier Jacob Bashevi von Treuenberg (1570 Verona – 1634 Mladá Boleslav). He was the former head of the Jewish community in Prague and the court Jew of emperors Rudolf II, Matthias and Ferdinand II, who spent last years of his life in Jičín.

In 1651, the community purchased a property in Valtice for its cemetery. In 1738, Jičín was home to 14 Jewish families, which grew to 22 Jewish families (119 individuals) in 1793. Besides trade and finance, the community’s members included a scribe, a singer, a tobacco storehouse owner, a physician, a butcher, a servant, a synagogue attendant, a toll collector, and a tailor.

Jičín Wallenstein's Square

Following emancipation in the middle of the 19th century, the number of Jews in town slowly began to decline. In 1880, Jičín was still home to 358 persons of the Jewish faith. On 13 January 1943, more than 100 Jewish residents of Jičín and the surrounding towns and villages were deported to Terezín. Of this number, 77 died in Auschwitz and other extermination camps. The local Jewish community was never re-established.

The Jičín Synagogue 

The Jičín synagogue was completed in 1773. The great fire of 23 June 1840 burnt the synagogue’s roof. Afterwards, the synagogue’s gables, roof trusses and roof were repaired. A stairway was built to the women’s gallery, an Empire-style portico was erected in front of the men’s entrance, and the interior was decorated with neo-classical wall paintings. Work was completed by the High Holidays in September 1840.

Jičín synagogue

The houses on Židovská Street were renovated and numbered I to IX. The synagogue is a small, late baroque building with a high gabled roof. Inside are a vaulted ceiling with three pairs of lunettes, three tall semi-circular vaulted windows along the lateral walls and two on the gable walls. The pilasters on the facade are topped by an architrave and a cornice.
The high baroque Aron Kodesh was allegedly taken from the church at the Jesuit College after its dissolution in 1773. The neo-classical wall decoration was restored during the synagogue’s renovation by the Jewish Community in Prague in 2001–2008. The modern Empire-style school was built as a rental building according to plans by local builder Josef Opolzer with a stylish façade, two portals, and an Empire-style stairway.

Jewish street Jičín

The local Jewish community purchased the building in 1872 and used the ground floor as a classroom, a winter prayer room, and a meeting room. In 1938, it was transferred to the town of Jičín, which sold the building to the Federation of Jewish Communities in 2006 for a symbolic price. As part of the “Revitalization of Jewish Monuments” project, the Federation renovated the building in 2010–2014 and installed an exhibition on Jewish authors who had been active in the Czech lands.

Jičín is just one of the many gems of Jewish heritage in the Czech Republic. Should you wish to visit this beautiful town and many more, you can always join a Europe kosher tour and learn about the Jewish history in Europe!