Photo by Sarah Owens.
Riva Hirsch, 91, is a Holocaust survivor. She was captured by Nazis at the age of 7 and endured unimaginable horrors while in a concentration camp. After surviving the war, Riva moved to the U.S. with her husband and two children and now lives at Brookdale University Park in Homewood.
It was 1941 when seven-year-old Riva Hirsch, then Riva Schuster, was startled by a pounding on her door. She waited anxiously as her father hesitated before opening it. On the other side stood a family friend, breathless and desperate to deliver a warning.
Hirsch remembers him saying, “I came to let you know that something bad is happening in our town, and I want you to be prepared.”
But nothing could have prepared them.
The Germans had reached Novaseletz, Romania — now modern-day Ukraine — where Hirsch lived with her parents, grandmother and two brothers. Acting on their friend’s warning, the family fled into the forest toward her grandparents’ home in Chotin. They never made it.
Captured by the Nazis, they were marched to Sukarein and crammed into cattle cars bound for a camp in Moghilev, near the border of Soviet Ukraine and the Romanian province of Bessarabia.
“While I was marching as a little girl, my feet stepped on babies smaller than seven,” Hirsch said. “They were laying dead, or they were still alive, but it was awful. Grown-ups, children, you could see the dogs ripping the bodies apart while I was walking.”
Hirsch would endure five years of starvation, disease and near-death experiences before she was liberated at age 12. Today, at 91, she fears that as Holocaust survivors grow fewer, their stories — and the horrors they endured — will fade from memory.
And evidence suggests her fears are well-founded.
A recent Anti-Defamation League study found that 20% of respondents worldwide have never heard of the Holocaust. Among those under age 35, that number is even higher. Incredibly, 4% of people surveyed believe the Holocaust never happened at all.
It’s why Hirsch shares her story, especially with young people.
“I just want the world to know, the future is in the youngsters,” she said. “Go to school, listen to your teachers. Make sure this never happens again.”
Photo courtesy of Alabama Holocaust Education Center.
Riva Schuster, now Riva Hirsch, age 15, circa 1949. Photo courtesy of Alabama Holocaust Education Center.
A CHILDHOOD STOLEN
Hirsch was separated from her family after being thrown from the train headed to Moghilev. She was later ferried across the Dniester River to a camp in Luchinetz, arriving hungry, with frozen, bleeding feet and suffering from malaria, typhus and lice.
At the camp, she saw her mother again — only to witness her being beaten with a rifle while trying to protect her husband.
“I had to go into the camp, where they gave me a little chain and a little metal dish and they said, ‘Go to the kitchen outside and stay in line, get some water.’ There was nothing, no water,” Hirsch said. “You just saw bodies falling apart. You saw bodies killed. Bodies fell apart because there was no water, no nothing. So they died right there where they said you’re going to get some food or water. I crawled back into my camp, and I was laying there, more dead than alive. My eyes, I could see nothing. The lice were my breakfast, my lunch, my dinner.”
One night, partisans rescued some of the girls, including Hirsch. She was told to “play dead” and was hidden in a wagon of hay, then taken to a Catholic convent in Tul’chin. For two years, she lived alone in a six-foot-square bunker, with rats and mice as her only company, eating bread and pork provided by the nuns every few days.
LIBERATION AND REBUILDING A LIFE
In 1945, Hirsch was liberated, though she was barely alive. She had lost all her teeth and was suffering from typhus and malaria. The nuns carried her to the road and left her there, where survivors found her and took her to Chernovitz. There, she was handed over to the Red Cross and reunited with her father. In time, they also found her mother and two brothers.
In 1946, Hirsch boarded a boat to Palestine, but it was intercepted by the British. The passengers were sent to a refugee camp in Cyprus, where she spent two more years. She finally arrived in Israel in 1948 and was reunited with her family.
“I was that time already 15 years old, and I wanted to find out what was happening to my life, my own life, with no education,” Hirsch said. “I lost my teeth. I lost my vision, I lost my hearing, everything.”
In Israel, Hirsch met her husband, Aisic, also a Holocaust survivor. They married in 1950 and had two children, Harold and Sheryl.
In 1962, she and Aisic moved to New York, determined to give their children the education they never had. In 1992, they relocated to Birmingham to be closer to their children and four grandchildren.
Photo courtesy of Alabama Holocaust Education Center.
Riva and Aisic Hirsch at their wedding in 1950.
A LEGACY OF REMEMBRANCE
Harold, who passed away in 2008, became a periodontist and maintained two thriving dental practices in Cullman and Jasper, as well as numerous Krystal restaurants around the state. He is survived by his wife, Felice; daughters, Jennifer Doobrow and Rachel Schneider; and sons-in-law, Todd Doobrow and Will Schneider. Grandchildren include Hampton Doobrow and Max and Aya Schneider.
Sheryl is an account manager for Diversified Maintenance in Birmingham and is married to Jay Perlstein. They have two children, Kayla and Brendan.
Aisic passed away in 2014, and Hirsch now lives at Brookdale University Park in Homewood. She shared her story in the wake of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, concerned by rising Holocaust denial and the spread of misinformation.
An estimated 2.2 billion people — 46% of the world’s adult population — harbor antisemitic attitudes, according to the ADL. That’s more than double the number recorded a decade ago when the ADL introduced the Global 100 Index, which measures antisemitic beliefs worldwide.
The survey of respondents from 103 countries found that less than half (48%) recognize the Holocaust’s historical accuracy, a number that drops to 39% among 18- to 34-year-olds. This worrying demographic trend reinforces Hirsch’s belief that her story — and those of other survivors — must continue to be told.
Photo courtesy of Alabama Holocaust Education Center.
From left, Harold, Sheryl, Riva and Aisic Hirsch at Harold’s Bar Mitzvah in 1968.
“A dictator like Hitler, he did not kill just six million Jews or Gypsies,” Hirsch said. “He killed anybody that he could put a hand on — children and babies.
“So we want to make sure it’s never going to happen to you kids, to your grandchildren, to my grandchildren, what happened to me. Because there is a lot of denial going on that the Holocaust didn’t happen — and it did happen.”
