Irma Hersh
Irma Hersh was born in 1892 in Vienna, Austria, the oldest of three children with two younger brothers, Carl and Franz. Her mother came from a wealthy family, spoke French and German, and was an agnostic who gave her children great freedom. Her father ran a business dealing in silverware, including repairs for restaurants. Irma attended a private school and an exclusive liceum, studying English and French and graduating with honors before completing two years of business college. Determined to be independent, she took a job in a bank at a time when few women worked, becoming one of the first women there.
Irma married Aga Hirsch in 1919, after the First World War during which her brothers were prisoners of war in Siberia. Her husband, an engineer and electrician, built a flourishing wholesale radio and electrical business. Through him and his devout family, Irma embraced Jewish religious life, which she had missed growing up. A passionate athlete from childhood, she played tennis, ice skated, swam, and was one of Vienna's first women drivers. She and her husband later took up bridge and enjoyed a comfortable life with a country home and summer orchard, until the rise of Hitler forced them to flee.
With help from cousins who provided an affidavit, and using her husband's favorable birth-quota, the family escaped, sending their teenage daughter ahead to relatives in England. Irma arrived past the Statue of Liberty and settled in Brooklyn, where she and her husband lived for thirty happy years. She worked making corsets and he as a radio technician, and they became members of a reform synagogue that still honors his memory with a gold tablet. Their daughter married Herbert Bauer, whose Neiman Marcus work brought the family to Dallas in 1956. After her husband's death, Irma moved to Dallas, where she continued playing bridge, chairing Meals on Wheels, and volunteering at the Jewish Community Center despite a retina problem affecting her vision.
Full Transcript
We're taping another session of oral interview in the lives of the seniors. Good morning. I have a sweet friend here. What's your name, dear? My name is Irma Hirsch. Irma Hirsch. Irma, good morning. Sit back, relax. Good morning, yes. We're going to talk about your life. And in order to talk about your life, we have to start at the beginning. Irma, where were you born and what year were you born? That's all deep secrets, but you can have it. It doesn't matter anymore. All right. Where were you born, Irma? I was born in 1892 in Vienna, Austria. I grew up there. I went to school.
I went to a private school. Good. Let's tell me about your family. What kind of a family were you born into? Were they poor? Were they middle caste? Were they aristocratic? No, they were not poor. What did your father do, Irma? Oh, wait a second. My mother was very educated and very much, she spoke both two languages, French and German, and she was a real angel in Menschengestalt. I mean, really, she had three children. I was the oldest and I had two brothers, Carl and Franz. And then my father was a very nice man, a very good man. They loved each other dearly. What did your dad do?
What did he do? Well, he was, he had a business, you know, at that time, like silverware, you know. He sold it and he took it from the restaurants for repair He did all right. Good. All right, Irma, what do you remember of being a little girl? Did you have servants in the house or did your mother do the work? Did you help her? So long ago it almost 90 years ago Well what do you remember now wait let me think what i remember do you remember going to school oh yes sure i do go to school uh my mother was from a very rich family and she had two sisters and they they were single one sister at that time already The younger one, she was very beautiful, and she, you know what she had?
What? A horse race. She raced horses. Oh, I'm excited. At that time. And she traveled all over at that time with the train to Paris and to Holland and all that. That was very progressive. And they were very interested in us. We had three children. My mother had three children. And they were very interested and they lived with us. That's nice. What do you remember about school, Lloyd's School? School? Yes. When I went to grade school, and then they enrolled me in a very exclusive liceum. You know, this is like a, what, gymnasium? What do you call it? A high school. High school. Right. And I went there and enjoyed it.
I had to go by Trotolica every morning. I came home two o'clock and what was it? I enjoyed it. I had one teacher I loved very much in English. We had to take English and French, obligatory, but or Latin and Greek, so most of them choose the modern languages, which came in later very handy. Absolutely. So you learned English as a young girl. Yeah, yeah. I graduated even with, by excellence, with Auszeit, what do you call this? Yeah, honors. With honors. Got the diploma. Then I went two years to a business college, and then they wanted me to be a teacher or something. My aunts, they had a big word in with my family.
So, but I said, no, I want to be independent, I want a job. At that time it wasn't usual, you know. For girls to work, yes? So I got, I applied for a job in a bank, in a bank. And they accepted me on account that I had this here background the schooling you know They usually had only I don know they didn have many women at that time I think I was one of the first Isn't that nice? What did you do at the bay? I was in the, you know, the notes, vexal notes, what do you call the vexal? Yeah, loans. Not loans, the one you write the note, what do you call it?
Checks? I'll check her. Wex department. Anywhere I was in the department, and I enjoyed it and had a good time. Good. At that age you were working. Were you dating also? What did you do socially? Did you go out with girlfriends or boys or what did the Jewish, did you go with Jewish people or mixed crowd? Mixed, mixed. That was no discrimination. That was all mixed. There was no difference if you were Jewish or most of them were Catholic. Uh-huh. So you did not grow up in a very Jewish area? Absolutely not. Did you have any Jewish education? No. None at all. Were your parents, did they go to synagogue or were they, they weren't?
No, not very. My mother was, she was an agnostic. An agnostic. She was very, then your family was really ahead. Ahead, many years ahead. All right, so you had no religious upbringing then to speak of. if you want to read that, that comes later. I missed it. Okay. More funny. Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, dating. Well, yes, I had girlfriends and I loved the theater and so, you know, go to a show. And then the main thing in my life was sports. How about that? Sports. I I grew up with my two brothers, you know. So I was 11 years old. I was already on the tennis court.
Oh, wonderful. Tennis, ice skating. My mother threw us in the swimming pool when we were. My little brother was four years old. And I was six throwing in, and we had to learn to swim. So I swim today. I go swimming every day now. Isn't that wonderful? You swim here at the center? No. Oh, no. I have it much easier. Where I live, we have a pool. I go in there every day. Good. Okay, so let's take you back to the bank. You work at the bank? Oh, Steve. Oh and how And with my brother I have still pictures of the two of us in our 20s I was 20 he was younger Anyway, so I grew up with the sports.
Okay. Well. When the bank, you worked at the bank? Yes, I worked at the bank. I had a nice salary. My mother and my father didn't take a penny of my money. Did you take any of your kids? They said I should save it when I get married, so I did that. And how did you get married? How did you meet your husband? Well, I met my husband. That was funny. At that time it wasn't done that you, it wasn't the thing to do to go if you want to be a nice girl, you know? And go out alone with the... With a boy. You know?
If you were not engaged, or even if you were engaged we had, what do you call it a... A chaperone. chapter. Yes. So I met the man and he was crazy about me and I didn't care for him, but he wanted me to date him. I said, all right, I come, but you have to bring somebody. I don't go a lot to know. If you don't bring anybody, I go home. So he brought a friend. And that friend, well, you know, love of first sight. He fell in love with me. I fell in love with He and the friend. That friend. His name was Aga Hirsch.
So, the war was on. That was in the First World War. My brothers were at the war. They were in Siberia. They were prisoners of war. My mother had a lot of problems. We were very close family. So, alright. When the war was over, he went into business. My husband was very energetic and very interesting man. He was interested in opera and in all that. And I was interested in sports. So we changed. He learned the sport. He was better than I was, especially on the sea, skilow. And I went to opera with him before he bought me. Now I start telling you the story.
That's right. So you were married. So we got married in 1919 when the war was over, his business started to flourish. He was an engineer, an electrician, you know. And the radio came in at that time and he made big business wholesale and installed villages. Electric light and all that. So it was a nice life. And then I wanted a child. He didn't want any children. His mother had six and she had so many problems to bring them up. Three sisters, three brothers. But I wanted a child. So finally I got him around. And after two years, I had my daughter. And then he was crazy about her.
So that was a nice life. I had a car, I was driving. I was even driving for the store, the radios and the workers and all that. So it was a nice life. But then Hitler came. And that was when I got my Jewish education. My husband was Jewish and he came from a very good religious family and he was a believer and a practicing Jew. So I was interested. So I learned. I went with him too. And we had his sisters and his brothers, they were in the synagogue, you know, they were members. So we were members and we went there. We didn't really go for every Friday night at that time.
It was very busy and then we didn't go in Vienna so much. Only on the holidays and so, you know, and we, in the York side or so, you know. So, and I liked that. I missed that. I don't know why. Well, I think there was always a boy. My brother didn't, but I missed the religion. My mother had no objection, whatever I did. She never told me what to do, and my father neither, and I think this is very good, you know. I wasn't under such a... And I did the right thing anyway. I think I did. I mean, did you and your husband ever take any vacations?
Oh, what do you mean vacation? We started to play a bridge. We brought a home in the country with a villa, what do you call it, a townhouse. When you have a place for the summer, we had an orchard and we were there. We spent the summer there. And we went we of course had a sleep in a help a very good one And we played bridge we started to play bridge at that time So when there was a tournament or anything we all just in winter we went with the ski and in summer, we had a good time, very good time. I had a car, I was one of the first lady drivers in Vienna.
But then Hitler came. And his partner was Gentile, that was a good thing. So when And Hitler, they said, Hitler is marching in. My daughter took the, his bookkeeper, yes, was gentile, nice man, nice guy, to the, what they call it? Rechtsanwalt, to the lawyer. and he signed a document and gave his partnership over to that nice guy. And he didn't take any money for it. He just gave it over. So he was out of the business. So the Nazis left him alone. He had no part in the store. They were on the general. He stayed home and paid cards. But then it got so tricky and I said, look, let's go.
Because Hitler said, you leave or die. They didn't do it. I said, the Jews must be killed off. Where you can leave, you go. So he had some cousins here and they wrote out an affidavit for us, a paper. But we had to wait for the quarter. but luckily we made it a year and a half because he was born in Ice Group, where? Mm-hmm. Second Slovakia. He had a good quota. So he got his quota. And my daughter, she went to school. I sent her to high school too. And she was just here to graduate. She was 17. So I said my brother was in England.
He had a branch office. He was in the piano business, So my mother was very much against it, my only child, and we know it's crazy about her, and it was a close family. So we sent her to England, took my brother to London. And we got the visa then and we came here happily luckily Yes and where did you arrive and where did you live I arrived in the Statue of Liberty What was your feeling when you saw the Statue of Liberty I was so happy. I can't tell you how. I found it. I lost everything. We had a beautiful apartment and I had all my furniture.
I had sent to Italy because they couldn't send it out of me over there. Anyway, we came and we saw the Statue of Liberty and my husband said, I'll tell you one thing, we'll never cross that ocean again. I said, I'm all for it. We've stopped. We got settled in Brooklyn. He loved it. I went to work. What did you do? I did what I never did before, but I had to make a course to know something, you know, because I didn't think that the bank, you know, that they would, I don't know, they would accept. English, we were both, I knew how to spell it, the grammar and everything.
Right. So my husband, too, was English, who could speak English. We did, he had no language problem. So I was making, to be surprised, corsets. Good for you. Or things like a job in a corset store. I always liked to sew on a machine. I had an electric machine, a motor, at that time already at home because of the counter. So I went to work. I made $12 a week for 60 hours and I loved it. Then my daughter came a few months later, we could gather in, she was a teenager, and she got a job, and she met a guy in Vienna in the tennis club, his parents, a very nice guy, and only child too.
And he was in India too, but I don't think he was there when she was there. I was still in Switzerland. I don't know anyway. No, he was not in India when she was there. No, he was not. He was in Switzerland. His parents sent him to Switzerland to be out of the way because they came and caught all the teenagers for the work colony and never heard of them again. So we, out, you go. So she came and she got married He came over too Yes he came He was here before He came in December 1939 and he came in January But they were always in connection, you know.
They were not lovers, so that wasn't done that time, you know. Just teenagers. They played tennis together and they went skating We went every evening. So they got married. They got married, yes. And how long were you in Brooklyn then, Irma? Thirty years. Thirty happy years. My husband loved it. We were members of the synagogue, a progressive synagogue, a reform. There was no reform. And my husband joined it on account of me because I wasn't so in Hebrew, so, you know, educated. and he loved it and they loved him and to this day they have his tablet there in Brooklyn out of Hirsch a gold tablet sending every year money on his yard site and what did he do in America?
you worked as a corset factory he didn't want anymore his own business it struck him very badly I was very bad I never was sorry to this day So he worked as a radio technician? Yes, yes. Electric, electric line he was. But he worked in a place, not in a factory, a big factory. And you were happy? Listen, there were just the two of you. We were very happy. We had a subscription in the Metropolitan Opera, and we went all over, and we traveled all over the United States. My daughter had her husband. She had two children. she left in Brooklyn and then he got a good job and his parents came over too his father, see he didn't do what my husband did he was in the shoe business his father in Vienna and the Nazis wanted him to sign and he didn't sign and took him to Dachau that's where he was and they told him one day in Dachau if he can get out of the country within three weeks they can go free So his wife got a visa, they waited for the visa, got to Sweden and they waited in Sweden for their visa and they came here too.
And they did very well, they had a store on the other side and she's still living, he passed away. He passed much sooner than my husband. He was older than my husband. So you lived in Brooklyn for the thirty years? Thirty years in Brooklyn. We loved it. You did the opera. Did you still continue with your sports at all? Oh, and how we played tennis and how we did. We still play tennis in Brooklyn. Skating was a little bit too far. We were both working, you know, but anyway we did, yes, the sports. So how did you end up in Dallas, Texas? What happens now?
Oh, that's what, what's his name? Herbie is his name. He's a guy. He's so good to me. He so can't tell you how he cares about Herbie. Herbert Bauer. Herbert Bauer. His name was Heinz in Vienna. Oh, this is your son-in-law? That's my son-in-law. Oh, okay. And daughter's husband. So he got offered a job to be in charge of the Southwest district to represent. Neiman, they wanted to sell to Neiman Marcus, Neiman said he only buys when somebody lives here in Dallas and makes his living here in Ottawa. So they asked him to move and they gladly moved with the pap, their son was eight and the little girl was two years old.
She's now a mama. She has herself a two-year-old son now. That, Susie, my pride and joy. So they took the job and they moved here in 56 with the kids and the kids grew up in here. They went to Hillcrest High and then they went to college. And so when my husband passed away, he was never sick, but all of a sudden he never complained. So he got very ill and in a year he was a, didn't, Bob got, what, yeah, Bob got, was getting married my grandson he wanted so much to go to the wedding He bought himself a nice Couldn make it He died in Boyd Nakers That why I don want to go And so I was a year alone and my daughter said, why should you stay there?
Nobody's there. His relatives, he had my husband, they were gone already too. So I moved here. I got that nice apartment where I still am over twelve years and I love it. Good. And that's the end of the story. And how did you get to the center? It's not the end of the story. Not the end of the center. Now when I came here, how did we get into it? must be my daughter. She was very active. She was at one time president of National Council of Jewish Women. They went to Israel as representative together years ago. That's about over 10 years ago. So she brought you to the center.
She must have... I went to the old center. No, So I know how, sure I know how. When we came visiting, I couldn't stand it, though I wanted to see my grandchildren when they were here. So we came, that was already 1967, 1968 I'm talking about. So I came here twice a year, how I did it with my job, keeping my job, and came here, and was here. We came always to Passover, my husband was conducting the Seder, that was the highlight of his year. The family and friends in my daughter's house, she is very social, very active, very... So when we came here, the friends told us, and we even spent one evening at the center there but when we came visiting so I knew a lot of people and played bridge with them We played bridge with them you know wherever we went we had a bridge game We went to Italy and had their beautiful bridge game, wherever.
That bridge is really... The bridge is international. So what do you do now? What are your interests now at the center? You play bridge? Yeah, now, well, I could do a lot. I did volunteer work. I did in Brooklyn, so I was working. I worked the volunteer for the council in the office. I worked in the office then. And I helped them with me. So when I came here, I tried here too. And I helped here too. What did I do here? Anyway, I had a good time. So I went to the Stuttgart Center, of course. And you're here now at least, what, twice a week?
and a half years since February 1969. But then I had this problem with my eyes. I got this retina problem. I have a vision problem. So I can't do much. But I still do volunteer work for council. I'm chairman of the Meals on Wheels. On the telephone, I'm still good. Oh, wonderful. How nice. And you still play bridge. And I still play bridge four times a week if I can. Good for you. Good for you. Irma, this has been really wonderful. Is there anything else that you can think of that you'd like to tell about? Were you ever politically involved? Were you in any political movement?
Were you ever a Zionist movement for Israel? Did you do anything like that? Let me think. My husband in Vienna, he didn't believe in the Zionist thing. You know, he said, we are Austrians. You know, we grew up with them. We didn't have that separation and all that separate feelings or so. But when he came here and he saw after Hitler came you know then he was very much for it and he contributed with a very generous thing I was always I like to do that I give donations to the St. Danto because I believe in it. My husband said, at one time, what did I do?
And he said, why did you do that? So he, look, I'm very proud and glad I can afford it. That's right. And that you can share. I made a chance here. I made nice money and I did a lot. So that's it. Good. Irma, if somebody came in and they're going to go to the library and they're going to see these tapes and they're going to say, Oh, Irma Hirsch, I knew that lady. Is there something you would like to tell your friends who listen to this tape or your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren about life, about living? What advice could you give them? Did you, you obviously didn't regret anything that you did in your life.
You feel that you did things, is there any advice you could give anyone? Advice? I'm not so smart to give other people advice. I was thinking if that many people talk, if I could start all over again, I would do it different. And I can only say I'm sure I would do the same thing again. I was sure that that's what you'd say. I did what I believed in, and I think I'm sure I made odd mistakes. I don't know. No one is perfect, Irma. Nobody is perfect. That's what I say. That's right. If people are nasty, I don't get upset. I try not to get upset.
I say, well, I can change them, but I can change myself. That's right. And that's what I try to do. Irma, it's been lovely. This half hour we spent together has been very nice. And I want to thank you for telling me all about my life. Can I have a copy of this here? Yes, I'm going to get some extra tapes, and I will make a copy of it for you. You could? Yes. Thank you, Irma.