The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope

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I and my mother, the two of us, we didn’t know anybody else who survived. Just two of us walking into the town. And my mother met somebody she knew, a Polish neighbor, and the neighbor was coming towards us and my mother was so happy to see somebody she knew. And the Polish woman said to her, which I remember very well, “What are you still doing here? I thought Hitler killed you all.” So, the war did not end for us, for many of us, at the liberation. Well, he was talking to me and I told him that for years, I wanted to write a book about my life. I started many times, but I just wasn’t disciplined enough and I’m not really a very good writer, at least not such a serious book. So, the first thing what he did though, he made a short program, I think, for your TV, right? But one of the things that was hard for me to read, Tova Friedman, was the impossible choices that the Germans imposed on the Jewish people, the decision your mother had to make when there was a point when the Nazis were choosing which families survived and which didn't. And she had to push away two of your cousins.

Chief Commandant ( Standortältester') in Auschwitz ("Operation Höss" – mass murder of Hungarian jews) That was just one thing that caused her early death, because she died at 45 in America. She never stopped talking about it. She felt this guilt. She lost 150 people. Brothers, sisters, cousins, not a single person survived from her family of origin, not one. And she thought to herself that maybe she could have saved those two little girls, although it wasn’t realistic, she could not have saved them, but she thought she could have. And her guilt just permeated her life. During the first interrogation they beat me to obtain evidence. I do not know what was in the transcript, or what I said, even though I signed it, because they gave me liquor and beat me with a whip. It was too much even for me to bear. The whip was my own. By chance it had found its way into my wife's luggage. My horse had hardly ever been touched by it, much less the prisoners. Somehow one of the interrogators probably thought that I had used it to constantly whip the prisoners. Tova Friedman ist eine der letzten Überlebenden und sie ist bereit ihre Geschichte zu erzählen. Auch knapp 80 Jahre später. Wir müssen ihr und allen anderen zuhören, wir dürfen die Geschichte niemals vergessen oder ruhen lassen. During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale.

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a b Pauer-Studer, Herlinde; Velleman, J. David (2015), "Rudolf Höss and Eleonore Hodys", Konrad Morgen, Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp.112–114, doi: 10.1057/9781137496959_17, ISBN 9781349505043 Heller, Kevin Jon (2011). The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law. Oxford University Press. p.149. ISBN 9780199554317.

Tova Friedman and Malcolm Brabant do an unbelievable job of educating us on Tova’s life, before, during and after Auschwitz. She was five years old when she entered the notorious concentration camp in the summer of 1944. Tova’s description and conversations with her mother during her time in Auschwitz are now etched in my mind. Her mother, Reizel, was an indomitable force, who was smart and kept her daughter alive. The horrors of the Holocaust brought to life, from the point of view of a small child who could barely read or recognize numbers. She knew her own, though, the number tattooed on her arm, by a young Jewish woman, in the camp. Darunter über 6 Millionen Juden, die in Ghettos gepfercht wurden, um anschließend in den Vernichtungslagern ermordet zu werden. a b Harding, Thomas (7 September 2013). "Hiding in N. Virginia, a daughter of Auschwitz". Washington Post . Retrieved 11 April 2023. So important to tell these stories and to remember, and to keep talking about it, keep talking about it, to remind us what humanity is capable of. SS Personnel Service Record of Rudolf Höss, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, US.Primomo, John W. (2020). Architect of death at Auschwitz: a biography of Rudolf Höss. Jefferson, North Carolina. pp.55–57. ISBN 978-1-4766-8146-7. OCLC 1133655190. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) Primomo, John W. (2020). Architect of death at Auschwitz: a biography of Rudolf Höss. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp.48–49. ISBN 978-1-4766-8146-7. OCLC 1133655190. Müller, Hans (1994). Führung gut – politisch unzuverlässig. Oberhausen, Germany: Asso Verlag. p.152. ISBN 3-921541-87-5. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I read/listen to Holocaust books for the light of the candle that the darkness won't extinguish, not for the darkness.

Fitzgibbon, Constantine; Hoess, Rudolf; Neugroschel, Joachim; Hoess, Rudolph; Levi, Primo (1 September 2000). Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess. Phoenix. ISBN 978-1842120248.Pressac, Jean-Claude; Pelt, Robert-Jan van (1994). "The Machinery of Mass Murder at Auschwitz". In Gutman, Yisrael; Berenbaum, Michael (eds.). Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. pp. 183–245. ISBN 978-0-253-32684-3. And Malcolm, I think one of the hardest things for me to read about, of the many, was the complicity of the non-German, the Poles and others, they were not Nazis, but they went along silently or otherwise, with what the Nazis were doing.