Holocaust survivor shares experience with Chabad of the South Hills
Dozens gathered inside Chabad of the South Hills Sunday evening and solemnly listened to a survivor of the Holocaust describe the horrific treatment the Jewish people suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany.
Tova Friedman shared her journey from a ghetto in Poland to being liberated by Russian soldiers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
Friedman’s appearance at the Mt. Lebanon synagogue had been planned in advance, but recent events in Israel weighed heavy in the room.
“Everything is with divine providence, and we worked for a long time to figure out a date a good couple of months ago,” said Batya Rosenblum, co-director of Chabad of the South Hills, while introducing Friedman. “We planned and we planned, and we chose this date. Of course, we didn’t know the events of the last week. But how appropriate it is that we come together as community to strengthen each other.”
On Oct. 7, Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, leaving more than 1,000 dead. Since then, the deadliest of five Gaza wars has killed more than 4,000 on both sides.
Friedman briefly addressed the ongoing conflict.
“Now we have a fabulous country, and an army, and we’re fighting back. Whether you agree or not how we’re fighting, it doesn’t matter. We are fighting back, because we said ‘never again’ and we mean never again,” Friedman said.
Friedman was born in 1938, and her earliest memories are from the age of 2 or 3, in a ghetto in central Poland. She credits her memory of this time to her mother, who spoke to her often about what they needed to do to survive.
Friedman described how most children and elderly were shot dead by German soldiers, and that she spent a lot of her time hiding under a table.
“That’s when I began to learn not to cry. Not to make noise. Not to ask questions. Not to get that involved in the life of the adults, because it was dangerous. You could be seen,” Friedman said.
Eventually, the family was moved to a labor camp where Friedman’s parents worked in an ammunition factory.
One day soldiers were rounding up Jewish children, and Friedman’s parents put her into an attic crawl space.
“They came into the room and they were shooting everywhere. I remember the bullets … Bullets went right past me. From the window I watched while all the children were put onto the truck. I knew where they were going. The parents had dug the graves for the children,” Friedman said.
Friedman and her mother were later taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and separated from each other.
Just as other victims were, Friedman was tattooed with a number on her arm. She recalls a kind, gentle Jewish woman giving her the tattoo.
“Her hands were shaking when she was doing the tattoo. She said, ‘I’m going to give you a very neat tattoo … Because if you ever survive, you can wear a long sleeve shirt and nobody will know,” Friedman said.
Friedman very nearly did not make it out of Auschwitz. She was among a group of children who were marched to the gas chambers and was nearly killed there.
“I have no idea, and I don’t know why, they told us to get dressed and go in fury and anger,” Friedman said.
Weeks later the Germans were abandoning the camp, burning evidence and killing any remaining witnesses. Friedman’s mother found her and helped her hide.
Friedman wrote about the experience in her memoir, “The Daughter of Auschwitz,” published in 2022.
At the age of 85, Friedman feels a responsibility to make sure the atrocities of the Holocaust are remembered by younger generations.
“The reason I’m talking so much and the reason I love talking to love people is because you have to be my memory. You can read in the books, but it’s not the same,” Friedman said. “Someday you’ll grow up … and somebody will say to you that it didn’t happen. So you know that it did.”