born 6 January 1913 in Bukowitz (Polish: Bukowiec)
died 13 January 1999 in London, England
historical former address Müncheberger Straße 3
Stumbling stone Eisenbahnstraße 147
Date of stone-laying 29 September 2006 / replaced 6 September 2017

Hilde Storch was born into a Jewish family in Bukowitz (Polish: Bukowiec) in the rural district of Schwetz (Polish: Świecko) on 6 January 1913. Together with her parents Rosa and Heimann Storch and her sister Eva, she initially moved to Frankfurt an der Oder and in 1929 to Fürsten­walde, where the family ran a shop for ladies’ and men’s wear. Hilde worked as a sales­woman in a clothing store at Fischerstraße 10.

On 18 August 1937, she married Werner Hirsch in Fürstenwalde. The couple lived for a while in Oschersleben near Quedlinburg, where they both worked in the department store “Mendel­sohn & Kugelman”. After Werner’s arrest during the November pogroms in 1938, Hilde also lost her job in December “[d]ue to the transfer (…) of the business to Aryan owners”.

Werner managed to escape from the “Third Reich” to England, where he was accommoda­ted in the Kitchener Camp, an English trans­migration camp for male Jewish refugees from the “Third Reich” on their way to the United States, Australia or elsewhere. Hilde followed him to England on 12 July 1939. The couple first lived in Sandwich and from 1946 in London. Hilde worked as a domestic help. In 1941, their son Harry was born. The family changed their German name Hirsch to the more English-sounding Hurst.

Hilde died in London on 13 January 1999. Her parents and sister did not survive the Shoah. Rosa and Heimann Storch were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, and Hilde’s sister Eva to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on 3 February 1943, where they were murdered.