‘Haunting and beautiful. Excruciatingly vivid, The Teacher of Auschwitz is rigorously researched and true to the history, powerfully conveying what a smart, loving and energetic man Fredy was.’ Dr Elizabeth Baer, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

‘The closest possible narrative a person who did not experience those times herself, could have written… which will do justice to Fredy and all those victims.’ Dita Kraus, the real-life inspiration for The Librarian of Auschwitz and one of the last known survivors of the children’s block.

Fredy built a wall against suffering in their hearts…

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At the dark heart of the Holocaust, there was a wooden hut whose walls were painted with cartoons; a place where children sang, staged plays and wrote poetry. Safely inside, but still in the shadow of the chimneys, they were given better food, kept free of vermin, and were even taught meditation to imagine full stomachs and a day without fear. The man who became their guiding light was a young Jewish prisoner named Fredy Hirsch.

But being a teacher in such a brutal concentration camp was no mean feat. Whether it was begging the SS for better provisions, or hiding his homosexuality from his persecutors, he risked his life every day for one thing: to protect the children from the mortal danger they all faced.

Time is running out for Fredy and the hundreds of children in his care. Can he find a way to teach them the one lesson they really need to know: how to survive?

From the bestselling author of Born Survivors, comes an assiduously researched and powerful new novel. Drawn from archives and survivor testimonies, historian and biographer Wendy Holden tells the inspirational and uplifting true story of Fredy Hirsch: The Teacher of Auschwitz.

My Review

No matter how many books I read about the holocaust, ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ never ceases to shock and disgust me. How anyone can carry out this level of cruelty is beyond me, particularly on children. If it ever ceases to upset me, then there is something very wrong.

The Teacher of Auschwitz is different from the books I have read in the past. It is told from the point of view of a young Jewish man named Fredy Hirsch. It’s based on a true story, and many of the other characters are also real. I can’t pretend it won’t upset you, because it will and it should. The worst parts are about the children who Fredy is trying to protect by teaching them about hope and survival. He does this through sport, art, poetry and drama, enlisting the help of others with the relevant skills.

But he can’t save them all, and many parts of the book are deeply harrowing, particularly the story of the 1200 Bialystok orphans, who arrived on the ‘special’ transport. Fredy is determined to find out more about them, in spite of putting himself at risk.

Other than Fredy, one man stood out for me, a shining light in the darkness. Viktor Pestek was a 19-year-old Rottenführer who was so shocked by what he saw at Auschwitz, that he sneaked information to Fredy from the resistance, and tried to help prisoners to escape, so they could tell the world what was really happening. He was a real person and you can read more about him at the end of the book. At the apposite end of the scale, names such as Eichmann and Mengele chilled me to the bone.

It’s a brilliantly written and researched book that combines fiction and non-fiction, and evokes emotions so strong that never go away even after all these years. When the allies finally liberated the camps, I can’t imagine what it must have been like to witness the horrors therein.

Many thanks to @Tr4cyF3nt0n for inviting me to be part of the #CompulsiveReaders #blogtour

About the Author

A journalist for eighteen years, ten on the Daily Telegraph of London, her first novel The Sense of Paper was published by Random House, New York, in 2006 to widespread critical acclaim. Her non-fiction titles have chiefly chronicled the lives of remarkable subjects. The latest is Born Survivors, the incredible story of three mothers who defied death at the hands of the Nazis to give life. She has also written the memoir of the only woman in the French Foreign Legion in Tomorrow To Be Brave, and about the mother of a woman killed after marrying a Sudanese warlord in Till The Sun Grows Cold. She wrote A Lotus Grows In The Mud – the memoir of actress Goldie Hawn – and Lady Blue Eyes, the autobiography of Frank Sinatra’s widow Barbara, all of which were New York Times and Sunday Times bestsellers.

She also wrote the international bestseller Ten Mindful Minutes, her second book with Goldie Hawn and the first in a series of books for parents and children. She wrote Kill Switch, the memoir of an honourable British soldier wrongly imprisoned in Afghanistan as well as Behind Enemy Lines, about a young Jewish spy who repeatedly crossed German lines. Her book Memories Are Made Of This, a biography of Dean Martin as seen through his daughter’s eyes has become an enduring bestseller and she worked with Billy Connolly on Journey To The Edge Of The World his TV-companion travel guide to the Northwest Passage screened around the world. She co-wrote American male supermodel Bruce Hulse’s explosive memoir, Sex, Love And Fashion. Other works have included Central 822, the autobiography of a pioneering policewoman at Scotland Yard which was dramatised on BBC Radio, Biting The Bullet, charting the remarkable life of an SAS wife, and Footprints In The Snow, the story of a paraplegic made into a British TV drama starring Caroline Quentin. Wendy was also responsible for the bestselling novelisations of the films The Full Monty and Waking Ned. Her first book, Unlawful Carnal Knowledge the true story of the controversial Irish abortion case was banned in Ireland. Shell Shock, her history of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, went with an award-winning Channel 4 television documentary series. She lives in Suffolk, England, with her husband and two dogs and divides her time between the UK and the US.