Recommendations of the Editorial team
In the upcoming edition of the Rolling Stone (06/25, in retail from May 30th), Thomas Kretschmann from Margot Friedländer, who died on Friday (May 9th) at the age of 103, said goodbye.
Kretschmann is an actor (“Indiana Jones and the bike of fate”) and photographer. For many years (since 81 editions) he has been working for Rolling Stone as a photo columnist. The last page of our editions each adorns a picture that the mime living in Hollywood took. Kretschmann sends us a photo every month, plus a song line or a little story.
Last year Thomas Kretschmann photographed Margot Friedländer. Subtitled with Friedländer’s famous appeal “be people”.
Margot Friedländer (1921–2025) – contemporary witness of the Holocaust and voice of memory
Friedländer was born in Berlin on November 5, 1921. As the daughter of a Jewish family, she experienced a process of disenfranchisement and persecution with the takeover of the National Socialists. After her brother Ralph and her mother were deported in January 1943, Margot dived. Her mother had given her the words beforehand: “Try to make your life.”
In 1944 Margot was revealed, arrested and deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. She survived the Shoah and, after the war, emigrated to the United States, where she married her husband Adolf Friedländer, also a Holocaust survivor.
Margot Friedländer: many awards
It was only in old age that she began to speak publicly about her history. In 2010 she returned to Berlin permanently in order to speak as a contemporary witness, especially to young people and to work against forgetting. Her autobiography “Attempts to make your life” has been awarded many times.
Margot Friedländer was u. awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1. Class, the honorary citizenship of Berlin and the European Charles Prize. With her commitment, she stood like hardly any other for education, reconciliation and humanity.
Two days after her last public appearance, she died in Berlin on May 9, 2025 at the age of 103. It was the day when Federal President Steinmeier wanted to hand over the great Cross of Merit, which he had previously awarded her.