Warsaw, Poland – Tova Friedman hid among the corpses at Auschwitz amid the chaos of the last days of the extermination camp.
Only 6 years old at the time, Friedman, born in Poland, was instructed by her mother to remain absolutely motionless in a bed in a country hospital, next to the body of a young woman who had just died. While German forces preparing to flee the site of their genocide went from bed to bed shooting at anyone who was still alive, Friedman barely breathed under a blanket and went unnoticed.
Days later, on January 27, 1945, she was among the thousands of prisoners who survived to greet the Soviet troops who liberated the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
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Now 82, Friedman hoped to celebrate Wednesday’s birthday by taking his eight grandchildren to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial, which is in the custody of the Polish state. The coronavirus pandemic prevented the trip.
This photo provided by the World Jewish Congress, Tova Friedman, an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor, born in Poland, holding a photo of her as a child with her mother, who also survived the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in New York, Friday , December 13, 2019. (World Jewish Congress via AP)
Instead, Friedman will be alone at home in Highland Park, New Jersey, on International Holocaust Memorial Day. However, a warning message from her on the rise of hatred will be part of a virtual practice organized by the World Jewish Congress.
Across Europe, victims were remembered and honored in many ways.
In Austria and Slovakia, hundreds of survivors received their first doses of a coronavirus vaccine in a symbolic and truly saving gesture, given the threat of the virus to older adults. In Israel, about 900 Holocaust survivors died of COVID-19 out of the 5,300 that were infected last year, the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics reported on Tuesday.
Pope Francis warned the Vatican that distorted ideologies could “end up destroying a people and humanity”. Meanwhile, Luxembourg has signed an agreement agreeing to pay damages and return inactive bank accounts, insurance policies and looted art to Holocaust survivors.
Institutions around the world, including the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial museum in Poland, Yad Vashem in Israel and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC have online events planned. The presidents of Israel, Germany and Poland were among those who planned to make remembrance and warning comments.
The online nature of this year’s celebrations is a stark contrast to how Friedman spent the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s release last year, when he gathered under a huge tent with other survivors and dozens of European leaders at the site of the old camp. It was one of the last major international meetings before the pandemic forced the cancellation of most major meetings.
Many Holocaust survivors in the United States, Israel and elsewhere are in a state of isolation previously unimaginable due to the pandemic. Friedman lost her husband last March and said she feels deeply alone now.
But survivors like her also found new connections with Zoom: World Jewish Congress leader Ronald Lauder organized video conferences for survivors and their children and grandchildren during the pandemic.
More than 1.1 million people were murdered by German Nazis and their henchmen in Auschwitz, the most notorious site in a network of camps and ghettos aimed at the destruction of Europe’s Jews. The vast majority of those killed at Auschwitz were Jews, but others, including Poles, Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war, were also killed in large numbers.
In all, about 6 million European Jews and millions of others were killed by the Germans and their collaborators. In 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 as the International Holocaust Memorial Day, an acknowledgment of Auschwitz’s iconic status.
Israel, which now has 197,000 Holocaust survivors, officially marks the day of remembrance of the Holocaust in the spring. But the events will also be held on Wednesday by survivors’ organizations and memory groups across the country, many of them held virtually or without the public.
Although the celebrations moved online for the first time, one constant is the motivation of survivors to tell their stories as words of caution.
Rose Schindler, a 91-year-old Auschwitz survivor who was originally from Czechoslovakia but now lives in San Diego, California, has been speaking to school groups about her experience for 50 years. Her story, and that of her late husband, Max, also a survivor, is also told in a book, “Two who survived: keeping hope alive while surviving the Holocaust.”
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After Schindler was transported to Auschwitz in 1944, she was selected more than once for immediate death in the gas chambers. She survived by escaping every time and joining work groups.
The horrors she experienced at Auschwitz – the mass murder of her parents and four of her seven siblings, hunger, being shaved, lice infestations – are difficult to convey, but she has continued to speak in groups, in the past few months only for Zoom .
“We have to tell our stories so that it doesn’t happen again,” Schindler told The Associated Press on Monday in a call from Zoom from his home. “What we went through is unbelievable, and the whole world was silent as it happened.”
Vice-President of the German Parliament, Claudia Roth, celebrates at the Memorial of Victims of Nazi Euthanasia Kills on International Holocaust Memory Day, Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, January 27, 2021. (AP Photo / Markus Schreiber )
Friedman says he believes it is his role to “sound the alarm” about the rise of anti-Semitism and other hatreds in the world, otherwise “another tragedy could happen”.
That hatred, she said, was clear when a crowd inspired by former President Donald Trump attacked the United States Capitol on January 6. Some rebels wore clothes with anti-Semitic messages like “Camp Auschwitz” and “6MWE”, which means “6 million was not enough.”
“It was totally shocking and I couldn’t believe it. And I don’t know what part of America feels that way. I hope it’s a very small and isolated group and not a generalized feeling,” said Friedman on Monday.
Still, the mob’s violence failed to shake his belief in the essential goodness of America and most Americans.
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“It is a country of freedom. It is a country that welcomed me,” said Friedman.
In his recorded message that will be broadcast on Wednesday, Friedman said he likens the hatred virus in the world to COVID-19. She said that the world today is witnessing “a virus of anti-Semitism, of racism, and if you don’t stop the virus, it will kill humanity”.