Auschwitz

Auschwitz enters the narrative as the destination of Richard and Hedwig Hirschhahn’s deportation in March 1943. The book names it at the far end of a sequence of persecution that began in the everyday streets and shops of Köpenick, making the camp’s place in the family’s story a devastating contrast to the ordinary life the boys could briefly have glimpsed.

The Hirschhahns’ Deportation

Richard and Hedwig were Jewish shopkeepers in Köpenick. Richard had fought and been wounded in the Great War and believed that his service would protect his family; Hedwig had recently returned from Wisconsin, and the family had begun considering a move there. In the week the rowers visited for the Olympics, American friends were staying with them. The account places these hopes and routines before their later destruction, without suggesting that the boys could have known what lay ahead.

After the family was left in Köpenick for forced labor, Eva worked in a Siemens munitions factory, while Richard and Hedwig were made to manufacture German military uniforms in a sweatshop. In March 1943, the SS put Richard and Hedwig on a train to Auschwitz. Eva evaded them, escaped to Berlin, and survived the war; the account does not specify what happened to her parents after their deportation.

Narrative Context

The narrative marks the distance between what the rowers could see and what would come. They might have looked into the Hirschhahns’ shop and seen the family at work, but they could not see the deportation and forced labor that awaited them. Auschwitz therefore appears not as a described setting but as the named endpoint of a future that remained invisible during the boys’ visit. The contrast turns an ordinary passing encounter into evidence of how Nazi persecution would reach people whose daily lives, attachments, and plans were still unfolding.