Holocaust survivor Tova Friedman has urged German politicians to toughen up how they tackle the “pestilence” of anti-Semitism to prevent a repeat of the Nazi era in Europe.
Ms Friedman told the Bundestag parliament how, by a miracle, she walked out of Auschwitz as a six-year-old with her mother after hiding among prisoner corpses.
In total, the Nazis’ industrialised genocide claimed about six million European Jewish lives, including 1.5 million children.
Some 81 years after her liberation, Ms Friedman, now living in US, said her grandchildren lived in fear of showing their Jewish identity since the October 7th, 2023, attacks.
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“As one of the last survivors of Auschwitz ... I beseech you, don’t let anti-Semitism grow and bloom here,” she said.
“The last time, you allowed a crazy man to take over your country and to destroy you ... and you are still recuperating. I just hope with all my heart that you become a little tougher now.”
Ms Friedman has become a social media star on TikTok and earned a three-minute standing ovation for her speech to the German parliament.
She reminded her audience how, a century ago, anti-Semitism “corrupted moral judgment, hollowed out institutions and ultimately turned ordinary people into participants in extraordinary crimes”.
Today’s surge in anti-Semitism, she warned, endangered democracy. The end of her speech appeared directed at MPs from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), leaders of which have dismissed remembrance of the Holocaust as a “guilt cult”.
Turning this claim on its head, Ms Friedman insisted that “younger generations are not responsible for what their ancestors did”.
“But you are in a position of leadership ... and that means taking this pestilence, this epidemic, this hatred, this anti-Semitism very, very seriously,” she said.
“Neutrality in the face of hatred is not neutrality – it is permission.”
Studies by the Jewish Claims Conference estimate there are now 196,000 Holocaust survivors still alive, down a fifth in two years.
Polish-born Friedman survived through what she calls a series of “miracles”. Her mother hid her in their ghetto, then taught her survival tactics: to avert her gaze at all times and to never cry.
Eventually the two were deported to Auschwitz but arrived on a Sunday, meaning they were admitted to the camp rather than marched directly to the gas chambers.
When Ms Friedman was eventually led to the chamber and waited with other children in an anteroom, a technical defect meant they were sent back to their barracks.
German federal president Frank Walter Steinmeier warned in a televised address that “the greatest danger for us all lies in forgetting” the horrors of the Nazi era.
To Germany’s Jewish citizens, he said: “You are part of us, and Germany is only at one with itself when Jews feel secure in our country.”
