Holocaust Survivor Belts Out National Anthem at Detroit Tigers Game
Image by Getty Images
— A Holocaust survivor sang the national anthem before a Major League Baseball Game between the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay.
Hermina Hirsch, 89, performed the national anthem on Saturday at Comerica Park in Detroit, fulfilling a long-time dream.
Hirsch told local television station WWJ in an interview in April in which she called on the ball club to allow her to sing that she would not be nervous singing in front of thousands of baseball fans.
“If I lived through the concentration camp, it couldn’t be that bad,” Hirsch said. “I don’t want to die before I sing at a baseball game.”
After an outpouring of fan support, Hirsch was asked to sing at a game.
Hirsh, who was born in Czechoslovakia, lived through a series of Nazi camps beginning in 1944, at the age of 17. She was liberated in January 1945.
She reportedly has been a Tigers fan since moving to Detroit with her husband in 1953. The couple immediately began attending baseball games
Hirsch has been singing the national anthem for years during regular meetings of Holocaust survivors in the area.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
