Holocaust Survivor Sings National Anthem for Detroit Tigers: Watch

DETROIT, MI – Hermina Hirsch, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who lives in Southfield, did well by her adopted country’s national anthem Saturday.

Singing the national anthem for a Major League Baseball game was a lifelong dream of Hirsch’s.

The Detroit Tigers fulfilled it, and her soprano voice filled Comerica Park before the Tigers took on the Tampa Bay Rays.

Hirsch and her family were sent to live in a ghetto in Czechoslovakia in 1944 and were later imprisoned by the Nazis in World War II concentration camps. She was 17 at the time.

Hirsch, her parents and her siblings were separated as she was shuttled between four or five concentration camps in Germany and Poland, including the largest and most notorious of the Nazi death camps, Auschwitz, WWJ reported.

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The camp where Hirsch had been imprisoned was liberated on Jan. 21, 1945, and Hirsch hitched rides to get back to her birthplace, her granddaughter, Andrea Hirsch, told WWJ.

After a year in a sanitorium to regain her health, a cousin set up a blind date with Bernard Hirsch, her now husband of 69 years. They moved to the Detroit area in 1953, and are longtime Tigers fans.

Singing before thousands, she told WWJ at the time, didn’t faze her at all.

“If I lived through the concentration camp, it couldn’t be that bad,” said Hirsch, who regularly sings “The Star Spangled Banner” to open Holocaust survivor meetings in the Detroit area.

Tigers fans loved her performance.

“This one brought me to tears,” Eva Strzelewicz wrote on the Tigers’ Facebook page. “You could see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice that she was so very happy, what a beautifully moving performance. Thank you to the Tigers organization for allowing us to witness Mrs. Hirsch having her dream fulfilled.”

“That’s what freedom is all about,” Judy Deel added. “She is thankful for living here and respects the national anthem and the flag.”

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Added Lauren Smith: “Thank you, Mrs. Hirsch. And thanks to our Detroit Tigers. I am so glad that you were able to get your wish. Your rendition of our national anthem was more heartfelt and genuine than any I've heard and you should be very proud.”

As Hirsch sang, members of the Rochester Community Schools’ Stoney Creek High School Sign Language Choir signed the national anthem.