In a place of death, he taught children how to live
 
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?
 
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.
 
Wendy Holden was a respected journalist and war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she has written more than thirty books featuring inspirational men and women, many of them set in WWII. Her bestselling title was Born Survivors which told the true story of three young mothers who hid their pregnancies from the Nazis and gave birth in the camps. She also wrote One Hundred Miracles, the memoir of Holocaust survivor Zuzana Ruzickova, and Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day with Captain Sir Tom Moore. Her first novel, The Sense of Paper, was published by Random House, New York, and her second The Cruelty of Beauty is optioned for a European film. She has just completed the first ever authorised biography of Audrey Hepburn, working with the actress's son, and is currently working on another novel. She lives near Halesworth in Suffolk with her husband and two dogs.
 
Bury St Edmunds Literature Festival would like to thank our partners Abbeygate Cinema for supporting this event.