Southwold Literary Festival ~ Wendy Holden: Author of “The Teacher of Auschwitz”

Wendy Holden was a respected journalist and war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. She is the author of more than thirty-five non-fiction titles and three novels featuring remarkable men and women, many of which are international bestsellers and several of which have been adapted for film, TV, and radio. Her books include “Born Survivors”, the bestselling story of three mothers who hid their pregnancies from the Nazis, now published in twenty-four countries, and the No.1 bestseller “Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day”, the memoir of Captain Sir Tom Moore.

Assiduously researched and drawn from archives and survivor testimonies, in “The Teacher of Auschwitz” historian and biographer Wendy Holden tells the inspirational and uplifting true story of Alfred "Fredy" Hirsch, a young Jewish teacher and athlete who risked everything to protect children in Auschwitz.

In 1943–44, he created a “children’s block” inside the camp—a tiny oasis where kids could learn, sing, draw, and laugh, even as death loomed outside. Fredy, just 27 and openly gay, used courage, discipline, and compassion to shield hundreds of children from despair. He secured food, insisted on cleanliness, and filled their days with hope. Though he died in 1944 at age 28, survivors remembered him as their guiding light. Wendy’s novel, based on survivor testimonies and archives, is heart-wrenching yet uplifting, a testament to resilience, humanity, and resistance in the darkest of places.

Unreserved seating.