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 United States with her husband and two children and now lives at Brookdale University Park in Homewood.
When Mountain Brook Junior High student Hampton Doobrow stood in front of community members at the school’s TEDx event, he didn’t just deliver a school speech — he carried forward a legacy of survival, resilience and remembrance.
“When my great-grandparents were 13, they were both living a life unthinkable to you and I,” Doobrow told the audience. “While I was worried about Bar Mitzvah prep, they couldn't meet because they were focused on survival.”
Doobrow is the great-grandson of Riva Hirsch, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor whose life has been marked by extraordinary hardship and enduring strength.
It was 1941 when seven-year-old 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.”
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.
LIFE AFTER LIBERATION
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. Aisic was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto with his family, and his mother eventually persuaded him to escape. He avoided Nazi capture by posing as a Catholic in another village. The pair 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.
This confidence and willingness to make the decision to pursue a better life is exactly what Doobrow spoke of during his speech, encouraging others to make decisions with a purpose, knowing their choices will have an impact on future generations.
“Throughout their lives, they had to be really confident in everything that they did,” Doobrow said, “and if they weren't confident with a lot of their decisions, I might not be standing here today.”
Those decisions eventually led the couple to relocate to the Birmingham area in 1992 to be closer to their children and four grandchildren, creating the family’s close bond that is rooted in a story that spans continents and centuries.
A LEGACY REMEMBERED
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 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.
“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.”
