Arts and Entertainment

Holocaust survivor tells story the history books missed

By Danielle Slabbekoorn GVL Columnist
1/29/2010

The Holocaust was something I always read about in history books, but I never sought to know the story beyond the facts to pass a test. It was one of those topics I shied away from because I didn't like stories that didn't have a happy ending.

This time, I was taught the story of the Holocaust in a way many people do not have the privilege of experiencing. I learned the story from a survivor of the Holocaust.

Tova Friedman came to Grand Rapids to speak about WGVU's documentary "Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah" made about her and her friend, Freida Tenenbaum, and their journey through the Holocaust as children.

At the Grand Rapids Civic Theater, a couple hundred viewers watched a 26-minute compilation of the documentary, showing the concentration camp Auschwitz that Friedman endured when she was only 6 years old.

The documentary clip showed Hitler enforcing his "Final Solution," which included the "killing project" of the Jews as Friedman called it.

As Tenenbaum and Friedman walked inside what is left of the Auschwitz concentration camp in the documentary, they cry as Tenenbaum said, "It bothers me the size of this killing machine ... this murder machine."

Friedman, who was only 3 years old when first put into a concentration camp, said her only knowledge of what was happening was that "being Jewish means dying and being a child means dying."

In the documentary, Tenenbaum spoke of her little sister who was shot and killed in the Firlej Forest with no mark or monument for her grave and said she left "a hole in my heart" that never went away.

After the documentary clip, I managed to wipe the tears from my eyes before applauding the entrance of Friedman, who is now 71 years old.

Friedman said she is often asked how she can speak of the Holocaust and she responded, "How can I not do it?" She said all the people are gone and very few are left to tell the story.

"Just myself and Frieda are left," she said. "We are it!"

Out of the village she and Tenenbaum grew up in, there were originally 50,000 Jews. When World War II ended, only 300 Jews returned and only five of them were children. Friedman and Tenenbaum were two of the five children to return.

She said her survival "just happened by accident" from the time she was only 1 year old. When celebrating her first birthday, Friedman was in her grandparents' house. That night, her parents' apartment was bombed and they had to evacuate to the ghetto. From there, her family went to a series of concentration camps where she narrowly escaped death on more than one occasion.

In each concentration camp, there were different rules kept in line by the German soldiers.

"I thought, 'Who am I to make eye contact with a soldier?'" she said. "My mother told me if I made eye contact I would be shot."

At one point, her mother and father hid her between a double ceiling because the soldiers were coming to take all the children to the gas chambers. She watched through a window as all the children were loaded onto wagons while the mothers screamed and cried.

"From the window I saw all the children put on wagons and the soldiers and mothers were pulling tug-of-war on the children," Friedman said. "There were pieces of the children being flung onto the wagon."

From then on, she said her mind went "blank" as her mind and emotions separated. After a while, they "had a feeling that nobody cared" until her father said, "There is America."

Soon, in January, she said there was talk of the Allies coming, and they began to feel a sense of hope.

At the end of Friedman's talk, the whole audience stood and applauded her efforts to keep the Holocaust story alive. I felt I had learned the story of the Holocaust in the only way I ever wanted to experience it. I learned it from the mouth of someone who experienced it, and that made it more memorable and realistic to me than any history book.

As Friedman said in her closing, "I don't want people to forget; you know that it happened because you met someone who came from it."

dslabbekoorn@lanthorn.com

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