Margot Friedländer, one of last Holocaust survivors, buried in Berlin

Yahoo

15-05-2025

Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer, one of the last living Jewish survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, was buried at a Jewish cemetery in Berlin on Thursday, with close friends, family and German leaders all gathered to pay their respects.
Friedländer died on Friday at the age of 103. Thanks to her tireless efforts to make sure the atrocities of the Holocaust are never forgotten, she became one of the best known survivors in her native Germany, dedicating the final decades of her life to campaigning for democracy and humanity.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and former leader Angela Merkel were among the high-profile guests in attendance at the funeral service in Berlin's Weissensee district.
Former chancellor Olaf Scholz, who passed on the baton to Merz last week, also attended the funeral service, along with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, parliamentary president Julia Klöckner and Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner.
Other prominent guests in attendance included Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of Springer, a Berlin-based multinational media company that owns outlets including Germany's Bild tabloid and US political news site Politico.
Fight for survival
Friedländer, who was born in Berlin in 1921, went into hiding in the city and was eventually sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944, in what was then Czechoslovakia. Her father, mother and brother were killed at Auschwitz.
She and her husband, whom she met at Theresienstadt, emigrated to the United States in 1946.
After her husband died, she started to visit Berlin in the 2000s and moved back permanently in 2010 at age 88. She worked tirelessly to inform young people in Germany about the Nazi regime.
A prize for school projects on the Holocaust and today's culture of remembrance bears her name.
"Hate is alien to me," Friedländer once said. Her aim was to give a voice to the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
In June 2018, at the age of 96, she was named an honorary citizen of Berlin. To mark her 100th birthday, a book and an illustrated biography were published.
In 2011, she was awarded Germany's highest civilian honour - the Order of Merit - given for outstanding service to the nation.
Buried in honorary grave
Speakers paid tribute to Friedländer's extraordinary life story and achievements, with the rabbi of the Chabad Jewish community in Berlin, Yehuda Teichtal, describing her story as "one of strength and unbreakable humanity."
Her legacy teaches us to always try to make the world a more humane and better place, Teichtal added.
The chairman of the Jewish Community of Berlin, Gideon Joffe, recalled that despite losing her family to the Nazis, she "emerged as someone who wasn't looking to hate, but to remember, who wasn't looking to accuse, but to tell."
Leeor Engländer, a close friend of Friedländer's, said her famous call to "Be human!" had reached generations of Germans.
In his eulogy, he also noted the immense effort it took his friend to fight against indifference and frustration.
The trauma of her experiences during the Holocaust never left her, even though she always appeared positive on the outside, said Engländer, adding that Friedländer had been constantly plagued by thoughts of what had become of all the children who had been sent to the gas chambers.
Following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, she was horrified about the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Germany. "This is how it started with us back then," she told her friend.
Following the service, Friedländer was buried in an honorary grave at Berlin's Weissensee cemetery, one of the largest Jewish graveyards in Europe.