THE TEACHER OF AUSCHWITZ
By Wendy Holden
Harper Perennial/HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780063398214
$17.99; Trade Paperback Original
On-sale: June 17, 2025
A Paperback Original—Also Available as a Simultaneous Hardcover Edition
A novel inspired by the powerful true story of a man who risked everything to protect children in Auschwitz. Fredy built a wall against suffering in their hearts . . .
Author Wendy Holden writes:
“The idea to write a book about Fredy Hirsch first came to me in the autumn of 2017 when I was living and working in Prague, researching a book called One Hundred Miracles about the Holocaust survivor and world-renowned musician Zuzana Ružičková.
Aged ninety and tiny like a bird, this indomitable survivor of three camps cried only twice throughout our extensive interviews. First when she recounted how her father died in Terezín and secondly when she told me about Fredy Hirsch. On her desk she kept a photo of him beside pictures of her mother and father, referring to them as her three guiding lights.
‘This beautiful man was like some sort of vision,’ Zuzana said. ‘I’d fainted not long after we arrived and, when I came to, he was leaning over me with a warm smile on his face. From that moment on, he became the most important person in my life.’
THE TEACHER OF AUSCHWITZ
Amid the brutality of the Holocaust, one bright spot shone inside the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. In the shadows of the smokestacks was a wooden hut where children sang, staged plays, wrote poetry, and learned about the world. Within those four walls, brightly adorned with hand-painted cartoons, the youngest prisoners were kept vermin-free, received better food, and were even taught to imagine having full stomachs and a day without fear. Their guiding light was a twenty-seven-year-old gay, Jewish athlete: Fredy Hirsch.
Being a teacher in a brutal concentration camp was no mean feat. Forced to beg senior SS officers for better provisions, Fredy risked his life every day to protect his beloved children from mortal danger.
But time was running out for Fredy and the hundreds in his care. Could this kind, compassionate, and brave man find a way to teach them the one lesson they really needed to know: how to survive?
The Teacher of Auschwitz shines a light on a truly remarkable individual and tells the inspiring story of how he fought to protect innocence and hope amid depravity and despair.
WENDY HOLDEN
Wendy Holden was a journalist for eighteen years, including a decade at the Daily Telegraph. She is the author and coauthor of more than thirty books, among them several internationally acclaimed wartime biographies, including Born Survivors, as well as the New York Times bestsellers A Lotus Grows in the Mud (with Goldie Hawn) and Lady Blue Eyes (with Frank Sinatra’s widow, Barbara). She lives in Suffolk, England, with her husband and two dogs, and divides her time between the UK and the US.
