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New York Post
11-05-2025
- General
- New York Post
German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer, revered for her strong voice against antisemitism, dead at 103
One of Germany's most prominent Holocaust survivors died at the age of 103 on Friday — just one day after the country marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Margot Friedländer, who was 23-years-old when she was captured after 15 months in hiding and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, died in Berlin on the same day she was honored with the Grand Cross of Merit, Germany's highest honor, her foundation announced. The cause of her death was not immediately clear. 4 German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer died at the age of 103 Friday. AFP via Getty Images 'Margot Friedländer was one of the strongest voices of our time: for peaceful coexistence, against anti-Semitism and forgetting,' German Chancellor Friedrich Merz posted on X Friday. 'She entrusted us with her story. It is our task and our duty to pass it on. We mourn with her family and friends.' 4 German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier credited Friedländer for restoring reconciliation in Germany. AFP via Getty Images Friedländer was born Margot Bendheim on Nov. 5, 1921, in Berlin, and was an aspiring dressmaker and fashion designer until she changed her appearance and went into hiding in January 1943 after her mother and brother were hauled away and later murdered at Auschwitz. Her father, a decorated war veteran who fought in World War I, was killed by the Nazis in 1942. Friedländer was captured in April 1944 and arrived at Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic, two months later, where she witnessed the emaciated prisoners who had been forced on death marches from Auschwitz ahead of its liberation. 4 Friedländer holds her Jewish Start of David she had to wear in Nazi Germany. AFP via Getty Images There she also met Adolf Friedländer – and they married shortly after the camp was liberated. The pair moved to New York in 1946 and became US citizens. She worked as a tailor and later ran a travel agency until she decided to return to her native country 64 years later. 4 Flowers lie next to the Stolperstein memorial marker for Friedländer. AP Friedländer visited Germany for the first time in 2003 — six years after she was widowed — and eventually moved back to Berlin in 2018, and spent her remaining years speaking out against the atrocities, hate and antisemitism she witnessed and experienced. 'She gave our country the gift of reconciliation – despite everything the Germans had done to her as a young person,' German President Frank-Walter Steimer said in a statement. 'We cannot be grateful enough for this gift.' With Post wires
eNCA
10-05-2025
- General
- eNCA
Margot Friedlaender, Germany's voice of Holocaust remembrance
NEW YORK - German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlaender, who has died at the age of 103, won plaudits at home and abroad for her tireless efforts to foster reconciliation and understanding. Born and raised in Berlin, Friedlaender's family were among the hundreds of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz over the course of World War II. Friedlander herself was interned at the camp in Theresienstadt in the modern-day Czech Republic, but survived the end of the war and emigrated to the United States. The death of her husband, Adolf Friedlaender, and a memoir writing course at a community centre in New York propelled her back to her hometown. Friedlander's prodigal return to Germany, where she dedicated herself to sharing her story with young people, made her one of the most prominent witnesses to the horrors of Adolf Hitler's regime. For her work promoting historical memory, she was given awards and showered by praise from political leaders from both sides of the Atlantic. "Perhaps the generation now that hears me in schools will say something to their children. I have no idea how far that will go," Friedlaender told German broadcaster ARD in 2021. Friedlaender preached for mutual empathy as an antidote to the world's evils. "Don't look at what separates you. Look at what unites you. Be human. Be reasonable," she said in 2024. - 'Try to make your life' - Born Margot Bendheim in 1921 to a family of button makers, young Margot had trained as a fashion illustrator. The family had lived through Hitler's rise to power and witnessed the Kristallnacht pogroms against Jewish businesses in 1938 but remained in Berlin. Friedlaender was 21 in 1943 when the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, came for her 17-year-old brother Ralph. Arriving home, Friedlaender spotted a stranger by the entrance to their building. The young girl covered her Jewish Star of David, passed the man and knocked on a neighbour's door. Soon after, she learnt that her brother had been taken and her mother, Auguste Bendheim, had turned herself in to the police to be by her son. She left Friedlaender a note: "Try to make your life." The invocation would stay with Friedlaender, as would the amber necklace left to her by her mother. Auguste Bendheim and brother Ralph were deported to Auschwitz and killed. Friedlaender's father, she would learn much later, was also murdered in the gas chambers at the camp. Friedlaender lived for more than a year in the underground, dying her hair red, submitting to nasal surgery to appear less Jewish. The people who protected her "risked everything to share a bed or their food with me", she told the Hamburger Abendblatt in 2010. Eventually, she was stopped and asked for her papers. Friedlaender confessed to her Jewish identity and was deported to Theresienstadt. - 'Stay careful' - At the concentration camp, she found Adolf Friedlaender, who she had known through the Jewish community in Berlin. After the Red Army liberated the camp in 1945, he asked her to marry him. A year later, the couple emigrated to the United States and settled in the New York borough of Queens. Adolf worked for Jewish organisations in the city, while Margot worked as a seamstress and a travel agent. AFP | JOHN MACDOUGALL In 1997, Adolf passed away and Friedlaender began taking classes at the 92nd Street Y, where he had worked, including a memoir writing course. At the centre, she met the German producer Thomas Halaczinsky, who, on hearing her recollections, wanted to return with Friedlaender to Berlin to film a documentary. Friedlaender returned to Germany in 2003 for the first time since she left, a step her husband had never been willing to contemplate. The resulting documentary was released in 2004 and her autobiography, whose title reused her mother's words, was published in 2008. In 2010 at the age of 88, Friedlaender decided to move permanently to Berlin and recovered her German citizenship. "I only got back what belonged to me," she said at the time. After her improbable return home, Friedlaender became a voice of moral authority in a country still trying to make amends for the atrocities of the Nazis. AFP | John MACDOUGALL Friedlaender was garlanded with awards, including Germany's federal order of merit, and graced the cover of the German edition of fashion magazine Vogue in 2024. On a visit to Berlin, then US President Joe Biden emotionally told the survivor of the Holocaust he was "actually honoured to be in your presence". In Germany, she dedicated herself to speaking to young people, touring schools and answering questions on her life. "I don't want to know what people's parents or grandparents did," Friedlaender told German weekly Die Zeit around her centenary. "I concentrate on telling them: stay careful, watch that something like that never happens again. Not for me, but for yourselves." Her last public engagement was just a few days before her death, at Berlin city hall, to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. "Be human! That is what I ask you to do: be human!," she said.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
German Holocaust survivor to return national award after AfD vote
A 99-year-old German Holocaust survivor said on Thursday he wants to return his Order of Merit - Germany's highest honour - after a controversial motion demanding reforms to migration policy passed in parliament due to far-right votes. Albrecht Weinberg, who survived the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, said the award had been a great honour but he was outraged by the vote. "It has become too heavy to bear when you have news like this. Terrible," Weinberg told dpa. The centre-right CDU/CSU bloc relied on support from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to push through the non-binding measure on Wednesday, the first time that the party has been involved in a majority vote in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament. Weinberg lost most of his family to the Nazis and survived several death marches. Along with his sister, Weinberg moved back to Germany from the United States in 2012 and has since regularly spoken with German schoolchildren about his experiences. "I've been going to schools for the last 10 years and talking to pupils about what could and would happen if they were to take power again," said Weinberg, referring to the far right. "They have no idea what it was like in 1945 Germany." The Mannheim photographer Luigi Toscano, a friend of Weinberg who has devoted his work to commemorating victims of the Nazis, said he also wants to return his Order of Merit. The pair plan to give the awards back to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier as soon as possible.
