Firsthand Account of Fredy Hirsch in Terezin and Auschwitz

This is an edited version of a portion of the interview Israeli filmmaker Rubi Gat did in English on June 21, 2015, with Zuzana Růžičková in her apartment in Prague. (Terezin is the Czech name and Theresienstadt is the German name for the Nazi concentration camp whose location is now in the Czech Republic.)

My name is Zuzana Růžičková (married Kalavisova). I was born in Pilsen [then Czechoslovakia] in the year 1927. All my life I have been a soloist harp recordist. I have [made] almost 90 CDs, and I’ve been touring almost all of the world. My husband was a composer and we live here in Prague since 1952 in this flat.

I met Fredy Hirsch in Terezin where we were deported from Pilsen in early 1942 — January 1942. I immediately met Fredy Hirsch and I also knew him in Auschwitz, where I was a helper to the pedagogue [teacher] Eva Weissova until Fredy’s death.

It was immediately after we came to Terezin. Of course I was a very young, almost a child, 14 – 15, and going away from our home and being transported to Terezin. At that time there was no transport from Bouschowitz to Terezin. We had to go by foot, and we had to carry 50 kilo we were permitted to take with us into Terezin.

When we arrived in Terezin I was very sick, and we were waiting to be directed to the blocks and to the buildings where we should go. Next to me were my parents and I think maybe I fainted a little bit, and suddenly I heard a voice in German saying, “What’s the matter with this child? Is she ill? Does she have somebody to take care of her?” And I opened my eyes and I saw wonderfully kind eyes. The eyes were the first thing important to me with his kindness.

Of course my mother and father immediately said that they are there and they will be taking care of me, But that’s how Fredy Hirsch always went to the new transports that came to Terezin to look for children who were alone,

I heard many stories about him taking the children who were alone with him and telling them fairy tales or reading to them. I heard from one boy that Fredy read to him Rilke poems and the other one he was teaching to make some dolls. Anyway, he took care with very wonderful empathy of the children who came into Theresienstadt without parents, without family, to spend the first night, the most terrible night, with them.

When I was in Theresienstadt I didn’t know very much about his personal life. I didn’t even know at first that he was a homosexual, and then the term was strange to me and I didn’t know what to think about it or how to imagine it.

I only heard some stories that he couldn’t fall in love, that’s how we heard it, and that his friends made him meet two of the most beautiful girls in Terezin. Different types. One of them was a redhead with green eyes, wonderful figure, just a beauty. She was not successful, that’s what I heard, and the other was a different type — black eyes, black hair, wonderful, very sexy. Nothing doing. So that was the gossip of the ghetto.

Otherwise I only knew about his personal life more when we were in Auschwitz and when we were in the children’s block. There he had a steady friend who was from Brno. We called him Epep, probably because he was called Epstein, I don’t know his first name; he was only known as Epep. He was the same age as Fredy. He was blond with blue eyes; he was musical; he had a recorder. Together with Fredy they used to play duets on the recorder, which is a flute… an ancient flute.

And this lasted I think several months and then Epep fell in love with a girl and left Fredy. And then afterwards Fredy had a much younger friend whom we called Romeo. I think he was called Romeo,

That was a very, very close relationship until Fredy’s death. Romeo knew how Fredy died. Romeo even tried to smuggle him some milk when we knew he was poisoned, so it was really great love.

They were evidently a couple. We all respected it but about physical things we never saw. Yes, he had a little room for himself.

He was always very careful of his dignity and of course of his image to the children. He was always sitting at the same table for two, always the two of them together, took the “meals” together. As I said talk together, play together, but never touching, never. Never anything erotic.

[Romeo] was a little bit chubby, blond again, very handsome, very beautiful, not as tall as Fredy. Very much in love, always taking care of Fredy, bringing him things, and serving him. That was different from Epep when both of them were just friends, just friendly, when Romeo adored Fredy. I think he must have been in his twenties.

I think that Fredy had to leave Germany because of his homosexuality of course, but all his family were estranged with him because his family was very religious Jewish, so I think he was estranged from his family because of this.

Here in Prague it was known that he was homosexual. Sometimes he was ridiculed because of that, how should I say, jokes about it. But not really that he would have been any way hampered with his work with children for instance.

I think Fredy had a big problem with his homosexuality because he was probably educated or it was in his character that he was almost puritanical. And I think his being homosexual was actually troubling him. That’s why he tried to get rid of it, fall in love with a girl when his friends, as I told you, in Theresienstadt tried to help him.

But after he did everything to conquer it, then he was proud enough of himself that he didn’t hide it, as you said. He was a personality and he decided, “Okay, I am like that, I must live with it.” But hiding it would not have been in his character.

I think that if he would have come back and lived nowadays he certainly wouldn’t have been hiding it. He would have been very happy that the times had changed like that.

Certainly not a happy man. Since I knew him in Terezin he was trying to help but also there was sadness in him because helping the children of course he knew of all the misery. And he did not help only the children; he helped also old people, so he must have been surrounded by a lot of misery.

Because I somehow was in touch with him very often, outside of his normal life, because I was a so-called runner for the office of children care. The office was in one barracks and Fredy’s office was in the other barracks. When they had a message from Fredy they needed a runner to go with the papers.

So I often found Fredy not well and not really happy. But when he came out of his office he was always smiling, full of energy and full of optimism. He was always funny, yes, to the children he must have been funny.

When I came to Auschwitz, I saw him the first time after three months because he went in September, and I went in December. So I really was shocked because he had many gray hairs; he had grown very much old or more mature. No, mature he was always, but older, tired and more worried of course. Yes, very often tired, very often not well, I think he had an ulcer. Yes, he was often in pain.

He was very handsome, even beautiful and his whole personality was so strong, especially it was very important with the Germans because first of all he was a German, he spoke a wonderful German, perfect German, and then he had this almost military carriage, He was very charismatic.

He always made us feel like princes and princesses, and kings and queens, and it was so important when we were in Auschwitz. Fredy always made us feel, even in jokes, made us feel we will be kings one day.

He came every day in Auschwitz to our barracks and, you probably know how the barracks was built, they were for horses, so there was always a chimney going through the barracks and Fredy used to climb on the chimney, take his recorder, and every day he taught us a song, Czech, German, French, English even. This is the song which Fredy taught us, and the next day he will come and we would sing the song, we would learn it one day, the other day we would sing it.

He was a father figure for me because I lost my father in Terezin very early, and when we came to Terezin actually and my father saw that Fredy was taking care of our group and I was very much in touch with him, so my father said, “I would like to get to know this man,” and he went to see Fredy. When he came back (once a week we could meet as a family), my father said, “This is a man who I absolutely trust to take care of you.” So through this saying of my father I sort of felt Fredy was a father figure.