Auschwitz survivor who became a significant voice in Holocaust education after settling in Manchester in the UK
Mayer Hersh, who died aged 90, became in the last 30 years of his life one of the foremost UK-based witnesses to the Holocaust. That he had lived to tell his story at all was little short of miraculous.
Nearly eighty years ago, Mayer Hersh was separated from his family in the Sieradz ghetto and went on a journey through numerous concentration camps, one of them being the Birkenau of Auschwitz Birkenau. He survived eighteen months at the heart of Birkenau and counted the trains arriving full, and the trains departing empty. And he saw the crematoria working 24/7, and “the smoke from the chimneys, all the time, the smoke from the chimneys.”
They could not have children, and towards the end of his life Mayer became very fretful that people would forget him, forget about his lost family, and forget what happened.
He received an MBE in his advanced years, and it is known he gave talks about his experiences to tens of thousands of school children in and around Manchester. He was one of the first of the survivors to give talks in schools, and initially wondered why he had been invited, and whether people would be interested in his story. He need not have worried but that was the way he was.
At his first talk, he was horrified to see a young student faint in front of him, she had been so shocked by his story. “I learned then that my words had power, and I also learned that this was not my intention, to make people like this poor girl pass out in front of me”.
So Mayer created a way of telling his story that was both powerful and compelling He learned and knew what details to leave in, and what to leave to the imagination only.
He was reluctant to show his tattoo from Auschwitz but when asked he would gently and deliberately roll up his sleeve to show a class or audience. As he grew older he became more and more reluctant to show it, one can only imagine why.
But he did draw up his sleeve at a talk at the Lakes School, the site of where Calgarth Estate once stood, and showed a class, and allowed us to photograph it.
“Never forget this moment, children, this is what happens when people are dehumanised and become just a number”.
And so for this reason I post Mayer’s number here, so that I keep my promise to him that he and his family would not be forgotten, that his story would live on, and so that his most profound wish is continued and that is that we do not forget.
Mayer survived, and his brother survived, but no one else from his extended family survived.
One photo below speaks for itself, the other is Mayer (right of picture), with his fellow survivor Jack Aizenberg, visiting Lakes School many years ago, and it was indeed on this occasion that the photograph of his arm was taken…
Mayer was a Lovely Man- In the 60’s As I remember He had a Menswear shop in Moss Side- A Lovely Kind Gentleman-