Margot Friedländer (Holocaust survivor)

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Margot Friedländer reading Anne Frank's diary (2012)
Stolperstein , Skalitzer Strasse 32, in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Margot Friedländer (also: Margot Friedlander ; born November 5, 1921 in Berlin as Margot Bendheim ) is a German survivor of the Holocaust who is still a contemporary witness .

Life

Both of Margot Friedländer's parents were Jews . They divorced before 1942. Margot lived with her four years younger brother Ralph with their mother Auguste Bendheim in Berlin-Kreuzberg . They tried to emigrate several times. In 1938 the US refused to immigrate . In 1942 her father was murdered in an extermination camp . On January 20, 1943, they planned to flee Germany, but Ralph was arrested by the Gestapo . The mother was able to leave a handbag with her address book and an amber necklace with neighbors before she turned herself in to the police to accompany her son Ralph. The neighbors also conveyed the oral message from her mother to Margot: "Try to make your life." The mother and brother were murdered in Auschwitz .

From then on, Margot lived in various hiding places. She dyed her black hair Titian red and replaced the Jewish star with a chain with a cross . She had her nose operated in order not to conform to the prejudice about the appearance of Jews and thus to be recognized as a Jew. She found her changing hiding places with opponents of National Socialism , although her plight was also exploited. In the spring of 1944 she came under the control of "grabbers" - Jews who, on behalf of the SS, were supposed to track down and extradite other Jews. She was arrested and taken to the Theresienstadt ghetto . There she met Adolf Friedländer again, whom she knew from the Jewish Cultural Association in Berlin and who had also lost his entire family. They survived the Holocaust, married, and traveled by ship to New York in 1946 . There they took on the US citizenship and wrote their last name "Friedlander".

Margot Friedländer worked in New York as a tailor and travel agent, among other things . In 1997 Adolf Friedländer died. In 2003, Margot Friedländer accepted an invitation from the Berlin Senate for “persecuted and emigrated citizens” and visited her hometown. Her autobiography Attempts to Make Your Life was published in 2008 . After making further visits to Berlin, she decided to return to the city permanently in 2010. She got her German citizenship back. Today Margot Friedländer visits schools and other institutions all over Germany up to three times a week to tell about her life. She occasionally wears the amber necklace that she received from her mother.

In 2011 she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon , which was presented to her on November 9, 2011 by the then Federal President Christian Wulff in Bellevue Palace .

The audio book version of her memories, which she read herself, was nominated for the German Audio Book Prize in 2016 .

On May 14, 2019, Margot Friedländer received the “Talisman” from the Deutschlandstiftung Integration for her contribution to her educational work in the presence of Christian Wulff and Chancellor Angela Merkel .

Margot Friedländer Prize

In 2014, the Margot Friedländer Prize was awarded for the first time by the Schwarzkopf Foundation . The prize and the associated competition are intended to motivate students and teachers to deal with the Holocaust and today's culture of remembrance and to use the knowledge gained from it to engage in the fight against anti-Semitism , right-wing extremism and marginalization.

Works

  • Margot Friedlander with Malin Schwerdtfeger : «Try to make your life». Hiding in Berlin as a Jew . Rowohlt Berlin, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-87134-587-6 .
  • I hadn't lived yet . In: Tina Hüttl, Alexander Meschnig (Ed.): You won't get us: Hidden as children - Jewish survivors tell stories. Piper, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-492-05521-5 , pp. 46-65. Short biography on page 65f.

Honors

Documentaries

  • Don't Call It Homesick. Film about Margot Friedländer's visits to Berlin by Thomas Halaczinsky, USA 2004, 60 minutes
  • Late return by Thomas Halaczinsky, 2010, 45 minutes

Audio guide

Since June 2013, Margot Friedländer's experiences during the Second World War in Berlin and her deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp have been processed in an audio guide. In an interactive city tour through Berlin, listeners can discover various stations and hiding spots. The individual stations were recorded by Margot Friedländer and produced with the Potsdam company Yopegu.

Web links

Commons : Margot Friedländer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The returnee , Berliner Morgenpost of November 6, 2011, accessed on November 10, 2011.
  2. ↑ a b c d Report on the life of Margot Friedländer in the Hamburger Abendblatt , accessed on February 20, 2011.
  3. ^ Margot Friedländer: It is not finished with Germany. welt.de from May 14, 2019, accessed on May 15, 2019
  4. ^ Report on Margot Friedländer's move to Germany in the Jüdischen Allgemeine , accessed on February 20, 2011.
  5. ^ Report in taz-online from November 9, 2011.
  6. ↑ Nominated for the German Audiobook Prize 2016 in the category "Best Publishing Achievement"
  7. ↑ Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer honored. sueddeutsche.de from May 14, 2019, accessed on May 14, 2019
  8. ↑ Information on the Margot Friedländer Prize on the Schwarzkopf Foundation homepage , accessed on April 29, 2019.
  9. ↑ Press release from June 22, 2018
  10. ↑ 2018 - Deutsche Gesellschaft eV Retrieved on September 14, 2019 .
  11. ^ Film website
  12. ↑ flo: City tour as an app - Holocaust survivors told. Morgenpost.de from June 26, 2013, accessed on April 29, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Friedländer, Margot
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Friedländer, Margot; Bendheim, Margot (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Holocaust survivor and witness
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin