Last signs of life

Charles Hannam (Karl Hirschland) remembers with grief the last letters written by his father:

  My father’s name was Max Hirschland. My mother was already dead; she died at an early age. Probably I really held it against my father subconsciously that I had to leave. A father is a powerful figure, isn’t he? He can protect you. Then I got on the train; now I know that no one was allowed to scream or cry, because otherwise they would have pulled that child out of the train. So he just said very quietly, ‘Bye.’ In English, we say: ‘with a stiff upper lip.’ I really held that against him. I did not answer his letters and he was always writing to me. It took me a long time to see the good side of things.

Charles Hannam 2010 *

Max Hirschland, born on 10 July 1881, was deported in 1942 to the ghetto of Theresienstadt, where he died in 1944.
< return | forward >