Latest news with #MargotFriedländerFoundation
New York Times
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Margot Friedländer, Holocaust Survivor Who Found Her Voice, Dies at 103
Margot Friedländer, a Holocaust survivor who spent more than 60 years in exile (as she saw it) in New York City before returning to Germany in 2010 and finding her voice as a champion of Holocaust remembrance — work that made her a celebrity to young Germans and landed her on the cover of German Vogue last year — died on Friday in Berlin. She was 103. Her death, in a hospital, was announced by the Margot Friedländer Foundation, an organization promoting tolerance and democracy. 'It helps me to talk about what happened,' she told the members of a UNICEF Club in 2023. 'You young people help me because you listen. I don't bottle it up anymore. I share my story for all of you.' Ms. Friedländer and her husband, Adolf — known in America as Eddie, for obvious reasons — arrived in New York in the summer of 1946. They settled into a small apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens. He found work as comptroller of the 92nd Street Y, the cultural center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and she became a travel agent. The couple had married at the camp where they were both interned; once in America, they never spoke of their shared experience. Mr. Friedländer was adamant about never returning to the country that had murdered their families. But when he died in 1997, Ms. Friedländer began to wonder what had been left behind. She had found a community at the Y, and, at the urging of Jo Frances Brown, who was then the program director there, she signed up for a memoir-writing class. It was weeks before she participated, however. The other students, all American-born, were writing about their families, their children, their pets. One night, unable to sleep, she began to write, and the first stories she told were her earliest childhood memories. The stories became a memoir, ''Try to Make Your Life': A Jewish Girl Hiding in Nazi Berlin,' written with Malin Schwerdtfeger and published in Germany in 2008. (An English-language edition came out in 2014.) But she had already found her mission. Thomas Halaczinsky, a documentary filmmaker, had heard that Ms. Friedländer was working on a memoir, and in 2003 he persuaded her to return to Berlin and tell her story as she revisited the city where she had grown up. Mr. Halaczinsky's film, 'Don't Call It Heimweh' — the word translates loosely as 'nostalgia' — came out the next year. The experience of returning to Berlin galvanized her. She felt welcomed by the city that had once shunned her. She began speaking to young people in schools around the country, startled that so many had no understanding of the Holocaust. Ms. Friedländer was 21 when the Gestapo came for her family. She was on her way home from her job on the night shift in an armaments factory, and her younger brother, Ralph, had been alone in their apartment. She arrived to find their front door sealed and guarded. Hiding the yellow star on her coat that proclaimed her identity as a Jew, Ms. Friedländer slipped away to a neighbor's house. There, she learned that her mother had turned herself in to the police so she could be with her 16-year-old son, a shy and bookish child. She had left her daughter her handbag with a talisman, a necklace of amber beads, an address book and a brief message, delivered by the neighbor: 'Try to make your life.' She walked for hours that first night, and in the morning she ducked into a hair salon and had her dark hair dyed Titian red. She spent the next 15 months in hiding, often stopping for just a night or two, relying on scribbled addresses passed from hand to hand, following the Berlin version of the Underground Railroad. There was the rank, filth-encrusted apartment where she stayed inside for months, with a dog for company. The couple that expected sex as rent (Ms. Friedländer declined). The billet infested with bedbugs. The gambling den. The man who gave her a cross to wear and took her to a plastic surgeon who straightened her nose for free, so she could pass as a gentile and venture out in public. The kindly couple with a thriving black-market business in food. None of her hosts were Jewish. But it was Jews who turned her in: two men who were so-called Jewish catchers, working for the Gestapo to save themselves from deportation. After her capture, Ms. Friedländer was sent to Theresienstadt, a town in Bohemia that the Germans had converted to a hybrid ghetto-camp and way station. It was June 1944. Many detainees were shipped away to be exterminated, but some 33,000 people died at Theresienstadt, where disease was rampant and food was scarce. There, Ms. Friedländer met up with Adolf Friedländer, whom she had known in Berlin at a Jewish cultural center where he was the administrative director and she worked as a seamstress in the costume department. She hadn't thought much of him at the time. He was 12 years older, bespectacled and taciturn. She found him arrogant. But at Theresienstadt, they became friends and confidants, poring over their vanished life in Berlin. When he asked her to marry him, she said yes. It was the waning days of the war, and their guards had begun to flee as the Russian Army approached. They were married by a rabbi in June 1945, with a prayer mantle held over their heads as a huppah. They found an old porcelain cup to smash, as tradition required. Ms. Friedländer saved a piece. A year later, they sailed into New York Harbor. When the Statue of Liberty emerged from the fog, Ms. Friedländer was ambivalent. Here was the vaunted symbol of liberty, but, as she wrote in her memoir, America had not welcomed her family when they needed it most. She was stateless, and she would feel that way for the next six decades. Anni Margot Bendheim was born on Nov. 5, 1921, in Berlin. Her mother, Auguste (Gross) Bendheim, came from a prosperous family but was independent-minded and had started her own button-making business that she turned over, reluctantly, to Margot's father, Arthur Bendheim, when they married. The marriage was unhappy, and the couple divorced when Margot was a teenager. Margot loved fashion, and she went to trade school to study drawing for fashion and advertising. Early in 1937, she began apprenticing at a dress salon. The Nuremberg Laws had been in effect for two years, stripping Jews of their rights and businesses. Margot's mother was desperate to emigrate, but her father, who had two disabled siblings, refused. Not only were there quotas restricting the number of Jewish émigrés to America and other host countries, but disability and illness were disqualifiers. After the divorce, Auguste worked desperately to find a way out. Many hoped-for leads evaporated, like the papers promised by a man who took their money and vanished. Margot and Ralph were conscripted to work in a factory that made armaments for the German military. During this period, their father emigrated to Belgium, heedless of the circumstances of his former wife and children. He would later die at Auschwitz. It took years for Ms. Friedländer to learn her mother and brother's fate. Their deaths were confirmed in 1959, but it would be another four decades before she learned the details, from the deportation lists at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City, an archive of German Jewish history. They had also been sent to Auschwitz. Her mother had been sent to the gas chamber upon arrival; her brother, a month later. Ms. Friedländer moved back to Berlin in 2010. Since then, she had made it her mission to tell her story, especially to young people. In 2023, she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, the German government's highest honor. 'She always said she had four lives,' Mr. Halaczinsky, the filmmaker, said in an interview. 'Without the film, I don't know if she would have gone back to Berlin. But she did, and she found a new life. She was a powerful woman; it must have been a tremendous effort.' Last summer, Ms. Friedländer appeared on the cover of German Vogue, beaming in a bright red coat. There was only one cover line: the word 'love' — the theme of the issue — rendered in Ms. Friedländer's shaky cursive, with her signature below it. She told the magazine she was 'appalled' at the rise of antisemitism and far-right nationalism. But she cautioned: 'Look not toward what separates us. Look toward what brings us together. Be people. Be sensible.'
New Indian Express
10-05-2025
- General
- New Indian Express
German Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer dies at age 103
BERLIN: Margot Friedländer, a German Jew who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp and became a high-profile witness to Nazi persecution in her final years, died Friday. She was 103. Her death was announced by the Margot Friedländer Foundation in Berlin on its website. Details about where she died, as well as the cause of death, were not immediately made public. She died the week of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in World War II. After spending much of her life in the United States, Friedländer returned to live in the German capital in her 80s. She was honored with Germany's highest decoration and with a statue at Berlin's City Hall. 'What I do gives me my strength and probably also my energy, because I speak for those who can no longer speak,' Friedländer said at an event at Berlin's Jewish Museum in 2018. 'I would like to say that I don't just speak for the 6 million Jews who were killed, but for all the people who were killed — innocent people,' she said. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences in a statement, saying she gave Germany reconciliation despite the horrors she went through here in her life. Steinmeier said the country cannot be grateful enough for her gift. A report released last month said more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive but 70% of them will be gone within the next 10 years.
Times
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Times
Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer dies aged 103
Margot Friedländer, a German Jew who was one of the country's last and most prominent Holocaust witnesses, has died in Berlin aged 103. Her death was announced on the website of the Margot Friedländer Foundation on Friday, hours after she had been due to receive Germany's highest award, the Grand Cross of Merit, from President Steinmeier in Bellevue Palace. She died in the week of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. Steinmeier paid tribute to her on Friday. 'She gave our country the gift of reconciliation — despite everything the Germans had done to her as a young person. We cannot be grateful enough for this gift,' he said. In a post on X, Friedrich Merz, the German
The Advertiser
09-05-2025
- General
- The Advertiser
Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer dies at age 103
Margot Friedländer, a German Jew who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp and became a high-profile witness to Nazi persecution in her final years, has died. She was 103. Her death was announced by the Margot Friedländer Foundation in Berlin, German news agency dpa reported Friday evening. She died the week of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. After spending much of her life in the United States, Friedländer returned to live in the German capital in her 80s. She was honoured with Germany's highest decoration and with a statue at Berlin's City Hall. "What I do gives me my strength and probably also my energy, because I speak for those who can no longer speak," Friedländer said at an event at Berlin's Jewish Museum in 2018. "I would like to say that I don't just speak for the six million Jews who were killed, but for all the people who were killed — innocent people," she said. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences in a statement, saying she gave Germany reconciliation despite the horrors she went through in her life. A report released last month said more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive, but 70 per cent of them will be gone within the next 10 years. Friedländer was born Margot Bendheim on November 5, 1921. Her father, Artur Bendheim, owned a shop in Berlin. He had fought for Germany and had been decorated in World War I. Friedländer recalled that, after the Nazis took power, her father initially said that: "they don't mean us; We're Germans". She added that: "we didn't see it until it was too late." Friedländer wanted to design clothes and started an apprenticeship as a tailor. After her parents divorced in 1937, Friedländer, her mother and younger brother went to live with her grandparents. In 1941, they had to move to a so-called "Jewish apartment," and Friedländer was forced to work nights at a metal factory. In January 1943, just as the family was planning to flee Berlin, Friedländer returned home to discover that her brother, Ralph, had been taken away by the Gestapo. A neighbour told her that her mother had decided to go to the police and "go with Ralph, wherever that may be." She passed on her mother's final message — "Try to make your life," which would later become the title of Friedländer's autobiography — along with her handbag. Friedländer went into hiding, taking off the yellow star that Jews were obliged to wear. She recalled getting her hair dyed red, reasoning that "people think Jews don't have red hair." She said that 16 people helped keep her under the radar over the next 15 months. That ended in April 1944 when she was taken in by police after being stopped for an identity check after leaving a bunker following an air raid. She said she quickly decided to tell the truth and say that she was Jewish. "The running and hiding was over," she said. "I felt separated from the fate of my people. I had felt guilty every day; had I gone with my mother and my brother, I would at least have known what had happened to them." Friedländer arrived in June 1944 at the packed Theresienstadt camp. In the spring of 1945, she recalled later, she saw the arrival of skeletal prisoners who had been forced onto death marches from Auschwitz ahead of that camp's liberation. "At that moment, we heard of the death camps, and at that moment I understood that I would not see my mother and my brother again," she said. Both were killed at the Auschwitz death camp. Her father had fled in 1939 to Belgium. He later went to France, where he was interned, before being deported in 1942 to Auschwitz, where he was also killed. Shortly after the camp's liberation, she married Adolf Friedländer, an acquaintance from Berlin whom she met again at Theresienstadt. He had a sister in America, and — after months in a camp for displaced persons — they arrived in New York in 1946. Friedländer stayed away from Germany for 57 years. She and her husband became US citizens; she worked as a tailor and later ran a travel agency. Adolf Friedländer died in 1997, aged 87. Margot returned to Germany for the first time in 2003. Margot Friedländer, a German Jew who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp and became a high-profile witness to Nazi persecution in her final years, has died. She was 103. Her death was announced by the Margot Friedländer Foundation in Berlin, German news agency dpa reported Friday evening. She died the week of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. After spending much of her life in the United States, Friedländer returned to live in the German capital in her 80s. She was honoured with Germany's highest decoration and with a statue at Berlin's City Hall. "What I do gives me my strength and probably also my energy, because I speak for those who can no longer speak," Friedländer said at an event at Berlin's Jewish Museum in 2018. "I would like to say that I don't just speak for the six million Jews who were killed, but for all the people who were killed — innocent people," she said. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences in a statement, saying she gave Germany reconciliation despite the horrors she went through in her life. A report released last month said more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive, but 70 per cent of them will be gone within the next 10 years. Friedländer was born Margot Bendheim on November 5, 1921. Her father, Artur Bendheim, owned a shop in Berlin. He had fought for Germany and had been decorated in World War I. Friedländer recalled that, after the Nazis took power, her father initially said that: "they don't mean us; We're Germans". She added that: "we didn't see it until it was too late." Friedländer wanted to design clothes and started an apprenticeship as a tailor. After her parents divorced in 1937, Friedländer, her mother and younger brother went to live with her grandparents. In 1941, they had to move to a so-called "Jewish apartment," and Friedländer was forced to work nights at a metal factory. In January 1943, just as the family was planning to flee Berlin, Friedländer returned home to discover that her brother, Ralph, had been taken away by the Gestapo. A neighbour told her that her mother had decided to go to the police and "go with Ralph, wherever that may be." She passed on her mother's final message — "Try to make your life," which would later become the title of Friedländer's autobiography — along with her handbag. Friedländer went into hiding, taking off the yellow star that Jews were obliged to wear. She recalled getting her hair dyed red, reasoning that "people think Jews don't have red hair." She said that 16 people helped keep her under the radar over the next 15 months. That ended in April 1944 when she was taken in by police after being stopped for an identity check after leaving a bunker following an air raid. She said she quickly decided to tell the truth and say that she was Jewish. "The running and hiding was over," she said. "I felt separated from the fate of my people. I had felt guilty every day; had I gone with my mother and my brother, I would at least have known what had happened to them." Friedländer arrived in June 1944 at the packed Theresienstadt camp. In the spring of 1945, she recalled later, she saw the arrival of skeletal prisoners who had been forced onto death marches from Auschwitz ahead of that camp's liberation. "At that moment, we heard of the death camps, and at that moment I understood that I would not see my mother and my brother again," she said. Both were killed at the Auschwitz death camp. Her father had fled in 1939 to Belgium. He later went to France, where he was interned, before being deported in 1942 to Auschwitz, where he was also killed. Shortly after the camp's liberation, she married Adolf Friedländer, an acquaintance from Berlin whom she met again at Theresienstadt. He had a sister in America, and — after months in a camp for displaced persons — they arrived in New York in 1946. Friedländer stayed away from Germany for 57 years. She and her husband became US citizens; she worked as a tailor and later ran a travel agency. Adolf Friedländer died in 1997, aged 87. Margot returned to Germany for the first time in 2003. Margot Friedländer, a German Jew who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp and became a high-profile witness to Nazi persecution in her final years, has died. She was 103. Her death was announced by the Margot Friedländer Foundation in Berlin, German news agency dpa reported Friday evening. She died the week of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. After spending much of her life in the United States, Friedländer returned to live in the German capital in her 80s. She was honoured with Germany's highest decoration and with a statue at Berlin's City Hall. "What I do gives me my strength and probably also my energy, because I speak for those who can no longer speak," Friedländer said at an event at Berlin's Jewish Museum in 2018. "I would like to say that I don't just speak for the six million Jews who were killed, but for all the people who were killed — innocent people," she said. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences in a statement, saying she gave Germany reconciliation despite the horrors she went through in her life. A report released last month said more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive, but 70 per cent of them will be gone within the next 10 years. Friedländer was born Margot Bendheim on November 5, 1921. Her father, Artur Bendheim, owned a shop in Berlin. He had fought for Germany and had been decorated in World War I. Friedländer recalled that, after the Nazis took power, her father initially said that: "they don't mean us; We're Germans". She added that: "we didn't see it until it was too late." Friedländer wanted to design clothes and started an apprenticeship as a tailor. After her parents divorced in 1937, Friedländer, her mother and younger brother went to live with her grandparents. In 1941, they had to move to a so-called "Jewish apartment," and Friedländer was forced to work nights at a metal factory. In January 1943, just as the family was planning to flee Berlin, Friedländer returned home to discover that her brother, Ralph, had been taken away by the Gestapo. A neighbour told her that her mother had decided to go to the police and "go with Ralph, wherever that may be." She passed on her mother's final message — "Try to make your life," which would later become the title of Friedländer's autobiography — along with her handbag. Friedländer went into hiding, taking off the yellow star that Jews were obliged to wear. She recalled getting her hair dyed red, reasoning that "people think Jews don't have red hair." She said that 16 people helped keep her under the radar over the next 15 months. That ended in April 1944 when she was taken in by police after being stopped for an identity check after leaving a bunker following an air raid. She said she quickly decided to tell the truth and say that she was Jewish. "The running and hiding was over," she said. "I felt separated from the fate of my people. I had felt guilty every day; had I gone with my mother and my brother, I would at least have known what had happened to them." Friedländer arrived in June 1944 at the packed Theresienstadt camp. In the spring of 1945, she recalled later, she saw the arrival of skeletal prisoners who had been forced onto death marches from Auschwitz ahead of that camp's liberation. "At that moment, we heard of the death camps, and at that moment I understood that I would not see my mother and my brother again," she said. Both were killed at the Auschwitz death camp. Her father had fled in 1939 to Belgium. He later went to France, where he was interned, before being deported in 1942 to Auschwitz, where he was also killed. Shortly after the camp's liberation, she married Adolf Friedländer, an acquaintance from Berlin whom she met again at Theresienstadt. He had a sister in America, and — after months in a camp for displaced persons — they arrived in New York in 1946. Friedländer stayed away from Germany for 57 years. She and her husband became US citizens; she worked as a tailor and later ran a travel agency. Adolf Friedländer died in 1997, aged 87. Margot returned to Germany for the first time in 2003. Margot Friedländer, a German Jew who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp and became a high-profile witness to Nazi persecution in her final years, has died. She was 103. Her death was announced by the Margot Friedländer Foundation in Berlin, German news agency dpa reported Friday evening. She died the week of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. After spending much of her life in the United States, Friedländer returned to live in the German capital in her 80s. She was honoured with Germany's highest decoration and with a statue at Berlin's City Hall. "What I do gives me my strength and probably also my energy, because I speak for those who can no longer speak," Friedländer said at an event at Berlin's Jewish Museum in 2018. "I would like to say that I don't just speak for the six million Jews who were killed, but for all the people who were killed — innocent people," she said. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences in a statement, saying she gave Germany reconciliation despite the horrors she went through in her life. A report released last month said more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive, but 70 per cent of them will be gone within the next 10 years. Friedländer was born Margot Bendheim on November 5, 1921. Her father, Artur Bendheim, owned a shop in Berlin. He had fought for Germany and had been decorated in World War I. Friedländer recalled that, after the Nazis took power, her father initially said that: "they don't mean us; We're Germans". She added that: "we didn't see it until it was too late." Friedländer wanted to design clothes and started an apprenticeship as a tailor. After her parents divorced in 1937, Friedländer, her mother and younger brother went to live with her grandparents. In 1941, they had to move to a so-called "Jewish apartment," and Friedländer was forced to work nights at a metal factory. In January 1943, just as the family was planning to flee Berlin, Friedländer returned home to discover that her brother, Ralph, had been taken away by the Gestapo. A neighbour told her that her mother had decided to go to the police and "go with Ralph, wherever that may be." She passed on her mother's final message — "Try to make your life," which would later become the title of Friedländer's autobiography — along with her handbag. Friedländer went into hiding, taking off the yellow star that Jews were obliged to wear. She recalled getting her hair dyed red, reasoning that "people think Jews don't have red hair." She said that 16 people helped keep her under the radar over the next 15 months. That ended in April 1944 when she was taken in by police after being stopped for an identity check after leaving a bunker following an air raid. She said she quickly decided to tell the truth and say that she was Jewish. "The running and hiding was over," she said. "I felt separated from the fate of my people. I had felt guilty every day; had I gone with my mother and my brother, I would at least have known what had happened to them." Friedländer arrived in June 1944 at the packed Theresienstadt camp. In the spring of 1945, she recalled later, she saw the arrival of skeletal prisoners who had been forced onto death marches from Auschwitz ahead of that camp's liberation. "At that moment, we heard of the death camps, and at that moment I understood that I would not see my mother and my brother again," she said. Both were killed at the Auschwitz death camp. Her father had fled in 1939 to Belgium. He later went to France, where he was interned, before being deported in 1942 to Auschwitz, where he was also killed. Shortly after the camp's liberation, she married Adolf Friedländer, an acquaintance from Berlin whom she met again at Theresienstadt. He had a sister in America, and — after months in a camp for displaced persons — they arrived in New York in 1946. Friedländer stayed away from Germany for 57 years. She and her husband became US citizens; she worked as a tailor and later ran a travel agency. Adolf Friedländer died in 1997, aged 87. Margot returned to Germany for the first time in 2003.
West Australian
09-05-2025
- General
- West Australian
Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer dies at age 103
Margot Friedländer, a German Jew who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp and became a high-profile witness to Nazi persecution in her final years, has died. She was 103. Her death was announced by the Margot Friedländer Foundation in Berlin, German news agency dpa reported Friday evening. She died the week of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Second World War. After spending much of her life in the United States, Friedländer returned to live in the German capital in her 80s. She was honoured with Germany's highest decoration and with a statue at Berlin's City Hall. "What I do gives me my strength and probably also my energy, because I speak for those who can no longer speak," Friedländer said at an event at Berlin's Jewish Museum in 2018. "I would like to say that I don't just speak for the six million Jews who were killed, but for all the people who were killed — innocent people," she said. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his condolences in a statement, saying she gave Germany reconciliation despite the horrors she went through in her life. A report released last month said more than 200,000 Jewish survivors are still alive, but 70 per cent of them will be gone within the next 10 years. Friedländer was born Margot Bendheim on November 5, 1921. Her father, Artur Bendheim, owned a shop in Berlin. He had fought for Germany and had been decorated in World War I. Friedländer recalled that, after the Nazis took power, her father initially said that: "they don't mean us; We're Germans". She added that: "we didn't see it until it was too late." Friedländer wanted to design clothes and started an apprenticeship as a tailor. After her parents divorced in 1937, Friedländer, her mother and younger brother went to live with her grandparents. In 1941, they had to move to a so-called "Jewish apartment," and Friedländer was forced to work nights at a metal factory. In January 1943, just as the family was planning to flee Berlin, Friedländer returned home to discover that her brother, Ralph, had been taken away by the Gestapo. A neighbour told her that her mother had decided to go to the police and "go with Ralph, wherever that may be." She passed on her mother's final message — "Try to make your life," which would later become the title of Friedländer's autobiography — along with her handbag. Friedländer went into hiding, taking off the yellow star that Jews were obliged to wear. She recalled getting her hair dyed red, reasoning that "people think Jews don't have red hair." She said that 16 people helped keep her under the radar over the next 15 months. That ended in April 1944 when she was taken in by police after being stopped for an identity check after leaving a bunker following an air raid. She said she quickly decided to tell the truth and say that she was Jewish. "The running and hiding was over," she said. "I felt separated from the fate of my people. I had felt guilty every day; had I gone with my mother and my brother, I would at least have known what had happened to them." Friedländer arrived in June 1944 at the packed Theresienstadt camp. In the spring of 1945, she recalled later, she saw the arrival of skeletal prisoners who had been forced onto death marches from Auschwitz ahead of that camp's liberation. "At that moment, we heard of the death camps, and at that moment I understood that I would not see my mother and my brother again," she said. Both were killed at the Auschwitz death camp. Her father had fled in 1939 to Belgium. He later went to France, where he was interned, before being deported in 1942 to Auschwitz, where he was also killed. Shortly after the camp's liberation, she married Adolf Friedländer, an acquaintance from Berlin whom she met again at Theresienstadt. He had a sister in America, and — after months in a camp for displaced persons — they arrived in New York in 1946. Friedländer stayed away from Germany for 57 years. She and her husband became US citizens; she worked as a tailor and later ran a travel agency. Adolf Friedländer died in 1997, aged 87. Margot returned to Germany for the first time in 2003.
