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The story of the ‘Kindertransporte’ (Kindertransports)Two extraordinary teachers Else Hirsch and Erich Klibansky were two extraordinary people who managed to save entire groups of children from the region now known as North Rhine-Westphalia. Both of them paid for their commitment with their lives because they didn’t think about emigrating themselves until it was too late. In Bochum, the teacher Else Hirsch organised the emigration of Jewish children in ten transports from the end of 1938 onwards. She had discussions with parents, she helped with the paperwork and drove to Berlin herself in order to clarify arrangements. It was Erich Klibansky, the principal of the Yavneh, the Jewish Grammar School in Cologne, who made it possible for 130 children to escape to England. Else Hirsch was deported from Bochum to Riga in January 1942 together with some of her students. According to the recollections of her student Ruben (Horst) Möller, in the ghetto at Riga she continued to give lessons in an abandoned building. Exactly when she died is not known but it was probably during the first half of 1943, in the Riga ghetto. |
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Else Hirsch with her school class, 1928 |
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