Else Hirsch

Else Hirsch (29 July 1889 – 1942 or 1943) was a Jewish teacher in Bochum, Germany, and a member of the German Resistance against Nazi Germany. She organized transports of Jewish children to the Netherlands and England, saving them from Nazi deportation to concentration camps and death. Hirsch perished in the Riga Ghetto, at the age of 53 or 54.

Biography Born in Bützow, in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Hirsch came from Berlin to Bochum at the end of 1926 and lived with her mother. She had taken an exam to qualify as a teacher of older children, but was unemployed and was assigned (and required) to teach at the Jewish school. She was initially less than pleased with this but soon threw herself into her work. In her free time, Hirsch worked at the Bochum Jewish Women's Club and gave Hebrew lessons to girls until these activities were stopped by the Nazis in autumn 1933.

In October 1937, she took a course in English at the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden in Berlin to be able to give English lessons to those who might be able to emigrate. She travelled to Palestine in June 1938. The Jewish school was also destroyed by the SA. Afterward, all of the official representatives of the Jewish community were deported. Hirsch fought to have the school reopened, but it stayed open only for a short while. There is a stolperstein for Hirsch at Huestraße 28 in Bochum, Germany, where she taught from 1927 to 1941.