Hirt, Susanne, 1913-2006

Susanne Hirt was born as Berta Susanne Hirsch in Berlin on August 1, 1913, the youngest daughter of Joseph Hirsch and his second wife Dorothea Hirsch née Schwabach. She had an elder sister Margarete (born Anna-Margarete), and two older half-siblings from Joseph Hirsch's first marriage, Alexander and Rosetta. Joseph Hirsch died when Susanne Hirsch was eight years old.

Susanne Hirsch began to study medicine at the University of Berlin, but was expelled from the university due to her Jewish heritage in 1934. She then went to Vienna, where she continued her medical studies for two semesters at the University of Vienna. When she had to leave the University of Vienna, she began a two-year course in physical education and physical education and gymnastics (kinesiology) in Vienna, where she worked with children with cerebral palsy. She watched the German troops enter Vienna in March 1938. Shortly thereafter she left to work as a nanny for family friends (the Weigerts) who had previously fled Germany and needed a caretaker for their young son. After six months, the Weigert family immigrated to the United States; Susanne Hirsch went with them, and in 1939 changed her surname to Hirt. She would spend the next three years with them. Her siblings were able to escape to Britain, but her mother was not, despite the work of both Susanne and Margarete Hirsch to assist her in leaving Germany. Dorothea Hirsch died in 1942, after deportation to Riga.

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