Margot Friedländer, Holocaust survivor Photo: dpa
From BZ/dpa
Before Margot Friedländer’s 102nd birthday this Sunday, Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth honored the role of Holocaust survivors.
“As a highly respected contemporary witness, Margot Friedländer has been teaching young people in particular for many years what it means to be exposed to persecution, terror and the crimes of an inhumane regime,” the Green politician said in a statement on Friday.
“But her commitment to combating anti-Semitism, racism and exclusion does not end there.” With the awarding of the Margot Friedländer Prize and the foundation named after her, she is continuing her life’s work, says Roth. Friedländer is a “strong voice for tolerance, respect, democracy and freedom”.
The Jewish family of Friedländer, who was born in Berlin, had already planned to flee the Nazis when the Gestapo came for their younger brother Ralph. He was murdered along with her mother Auguste Bendheim in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Friedländer hid in various places for a long time until she was caught in 1944 and transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
She survived the camp with her future husband Adolf Friedländer and emigrated to New York in 1946. At the age of 88, she returned to Berlin after decades in the USA. Since then, she has been appearing at schools in her old homeland to tell her story as one of the last contemporary witnesses.