Both Margot Friedländer’s parents were Jews. They divorced in 1937. Margot lived with her mother Auguste Bendheim in Berlin-Kreuzberg with her brother Ralph, who was four years younger. They tried to emigrate several times. In 1938, the USA refused to allow them to immigrate. In 1942, their father was murdered in an extermination camp.
On 20 January 1943, they planned their escape from Germany, but Ralph was arrested by the Gestapo. The mother was still able to deposit a handbag containing her address book and an amber necklace with neighbours before turning herself in to the police to accompany her son Ralph.The neighbours also conveyed her mother’s verbal message to Margot: “Try to make your life.”
The mother and brother were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp.Margot lived in various hiding places from then on. She dyed her black hair Titian red and replaced the Jewish star with a chain with a cross. She had her nose operated on so as not to conform to the prejudice about the appearance of Jews and thus be recognised 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 were commissioned by the SS 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 travelled by ship to New York in 1946. There they took US citizenship and wrote their surname “Friedlander”.Margot Friedländer worked in New York as a dressmaker and travel agent, among other things.
Adolf Friedländer died in 1997. In 2003, Margot Friedländer accepted an invitation from the Berlin Senate for “persecuted and emigrated citizens” and visited her hometown.
In 2008, her autobiography Versuche, dein Leben zu machen was published. After making further visits to Berlin, she decided to return to the city permanently in 2010. She regained German citizenship.
Today, Margot Friedländer visits schools and other institutions throughout Germany up to three times a week to talk about her life, occasionally wearing the amber necklace she had received from her mother.
In 2011, she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, presented to her by the then Federal President Christian Wulff at Bellevue Palace on 9 November 2011.
On 14 May 2019, Margot Friedländer received the “Talisman” of the Deutschlandstiftung Integration in the presence of Christian Wulff and Chancellor Angela Merkel for her services to her educational work.
On 5 November 2021, Friedländer will complete her 100th year.Translated with
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A remarkable woman:
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Both Margot Friedländer’s parents were Jews. They divorced in 1937. Margot lived with her mother Auguste Bendheim in Berlin-Kreuzberg with her brother Ralph, who was four years younger. They tried to emigrate several times. In 1938, the USA refused to allow them to immigrate. In 1942, their father was murdered in an extermination camp.
On 20 January 1943, they planned their escape from Germany, but Ralph was arrested by the Gestapo. The mother was still able to deposit a handbag containing her address book and an amber necklace with neighbours before turning herself in to the police to accompany her son Ralph.The neighbours also conveyed her mother’s verbal message to Margot: “Try to make your life.”
The mother and brother were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp.Margot lived in various hiding places from then on. She dyed her black hair Titian red and replaced the Jewish star with a chain with a cross. She had her nose operated on so as not to conform to the prejudice about the appearance of Jews and thus be recognised 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 were commissioned by the SS 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 travelled by ship to New York in 1946. There they took US citizenship and wrote their surname “Friedlander”.Margot Friedländer worked in New York as a dressmaker and travel agent, among other things.
Adolf Friedländer died in 1997. In 2003, Margot Friedländer accepted an invitation from the Berlin Senate for “persecuted and emigrated citizens” and visited her hometown.
In 2008, her autobiography Versuche, dein Leben zu machen was published. After making further visits to Berlin, she decided to return to the city permanently in 2010. She regained German citizenship.
Today, Margot Friedländer visits schools and other institutions throughout Germany up to three times a week to talk about her life, occasionally wearing the amber necklace she had received from her mother.
In 2011, she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, presented to her by the then Federal President Christian Wulff at Bellevue Palace on 9 November 2011.
On 14 May 2019, Margot Friedländer received the “Talisman” of the Deutschlandstiftung Integration in the presence of Christian Wulff and Chancellor Angela Merkel for her services to her educational work.
On 5 November 2021, Friedländer will complete her 100th year.Translated with
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