A Holocaust survivor finally fulfilled her longtime wish to sing the national anthem at a Major League Baseball game.
A woman who survived the Holocaust has finally fulfilled her longtime wish to sing the national anthem at a Major League Baseball game.
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Hermina Hirsch, 89, sang the anthem on Saturday at Comerica Park before the Detroit Tigers took on the Tampa Bay Rays. She’s been a fan of the Tigers for more than 60 years, according to WWJ-TV.
“At my age, I figure that this would do it,” she said. “I don’t want to die before I sing at a baseball game,” she said.
Hermina was born in what was then Czechoslovakia in 1927. She was 17 when she was separated from her family and moved among five concentration camps, including Auschwitz.
She was freed in 1945, married her husband, Bernard Hirsch, two years later, and moved to Detroit in 1953.
Asked if she was nervous singing in front of the huge crowd, she said, "If I lived through the concentration camp, it couldn't be that bad."
Hermina has been an active singer at her local Jewish community center and her synagogue. Her grandchildren got the Tigers’ attention when they saw a video of her singing.
Her granddaughter, Andrea Hirsch, said that her grandmother “loves to sing and thought it would be great to mix her talent and passion for singing with her husband’s love of the game.”
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