Out of the shadows

"Wally (Walter) Hirsh O.B.E; JP is a keen potter, tramper, environmentalist, author, adventurer and tour leader. He has been an educator for most of his life but is probably better known in New Zealand for his work in the very high profile position of Race Relations Conciliator and Human Rights Commissioner. He has had a lifetime of involvement in ethnic affairs and community work and still, as he approaches 80, is a Trustee of several community based trusts. In association with his wife Adele, he still plans and leads educational travel tours for senior citizens, in New Zealand, Australia, The Pacific and South East Asia. Like so many people in this era Wally was encouraged to write his story. His has been a very diverse life. It began in Mönchengladbach in 1936, continued in Milton New Zealand from 1938 and has flourished in this land of milk and manuka honey ever since. In writing the story of his life, Wally acknowledges his many forebears who were denied the fulfillment of their lives in the worst chapter of man's inhumanity to man in our history, the Holocaust; while also writing of the energy put into rebuilding a united family spread over five continents. Wally and Adele li