The Communique

Issue date: 4/26/07 Section: News

Media Credit: KSP News

"Hate really doesn't lessen your pain," said Manya Friedman, a Holocaust survivor who spoke to students, faculty and community members at Ballantyne Auditorium on Tuesday.

Hate was the main point of Friedman's message as she described her own account of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany and her trail from concentration camps to freedom.

Her journey started when she was 13 and moved to a city in Poland that Germany invaded in 1939. Friedman's father was witness to the first hate crimes when he was taken from the family and forced to work for the Nazis in another city. Friedman said the Nazis began controlling their lives, threatening in one instance to kill her father for not making a flower box for the front of their home. "We lived in constant fear because every single thing was a matter of life or death," recalled Friedman.

According to Friedman, the hate continued as the war progressed and life for Jews worsened by the day. Synagogues were burned, Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend schools and curfews were imposed. "My mother was thrown into jail for talking to her neighbor outside of our home," said Friedman, "...I just cannot describe the anxiety of sitting at home and waiting until everyone got home."

By the end of 1940 half of the 28,000 Jews in Friedman's city of 130,000 had been deported. In order to survive deportation, the Jews wanted to be useful to the Germans so they opened shops to aid the German military, stated Friedman. She said she found employment as a seamstress making uniforms even though she couldn't sew.

It was during a seemingly normal day at work when the Nazis surrounded the shop, gathered them and put them in a building to await deportation. Friedman's parents stood below her second-story window where she was held, attempting to communicate with her. "A thought came over me that we will never see each other again," recalled Friedman. As it turned out, it was the last time I ever saw my parents and brothers again."

After being deported Friedman lost more than her family, she lost her name and her humanity. She was sent to a sub-camp of Auschwitz where she was given a dress, on pair of wooden shoes and small rations of bread and soup. The Nazis shaved Friedman's head, tattooed her arm and made her line up naked for daily assessment.

It was January 1945 when an immediate evacuation of her camp occurred after word that Soviet Army was approaching. Friedman and her best friend were loaded into open-air train cars typically used to haul coal and were transported back and forth to central Germany many times over 10 days.

Their trip ended in Ravensbruck, which Friedman compared to hell because of its overcrowding and corpses lying about. "At times you just wanted to give up but I said I am not going to end up like that," Friedman said, referring to the corpses. She soon was part of a selection of a dozen girls chosen to board a truck where they were surprisingly provided with packages of food. They had been picked up by the Swedish Red Cross and their destination was Copenhagen, which meant freedom. "I just couldn't comprehend that we were free, " added Friedman.

Millions of Jews died during the Holocaust and Friedman said she felt it is her obligation to tell the stories for those who can't. "I started speaking publicly 10 years ago," commented Friedman. "I still choke up and it's hard to talk about it but I think maybe this is a way I can honor my parents." Friedman concluded that tolerance is the way to fight crimes against humanity and genocide.

Friedman resides in Maryland and is a volunteer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Friedman, along with other Holocaust survivors, contributed her memoirs to three books that are now available at the Kirkwood Community College library.

Kirkwood student Rachel Trimpe, sign language interpreting major, said she felt Friedman's message is important for people to hear so we don't repeat the same mistakes. "I think it's brave of her to tell her story and I learned that I need to be more tolerant of everybody...I need to accept them."

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