Parliament organises a special plenary meeting in Brussels on the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, 77 years after the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp was liberated on 27 January 1945. Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer addresses MEPs.

plenary session

ceremony

METSOLA, Roberta (EPP, MT)

Holocaust remembrance (T)

International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Address by Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer and Minute of silence

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/9035874/1643289234629_I217046Chapters%5BSD-EN%5D.srt

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDL&Auml;NDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, Madam President of the European Parliament, Madam President of the European Commission. President of the European Council. Distinguished Members of the European Parliament. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour for me to be able to speak to you today. A few days ago, on the 20th of January, an event at the house of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin recalled that 80 years ago, the National Socialist leadership had decided on the unimaginable 80 years ago. What they called the final solution. In other words, the murder of the European Jews.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, Today, throughout Europe, we are commemorating the liberation of the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz on January the 27th, 1945. This remembrance is particularly important today. It wasn't only in Germany that people looked on and did nothing to protect the German neighbours. In many other countries too, hardly anyone lifted a finger to save their Jewish neighbours from deportation. And Denmark was a laudable exception, where the general population, with the full knowledge of the government, protected and saved the Jewish fellow citizens. But unfortunately, that was the exception.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, We only need to think of the Evian conference, where all the states except the Dominican Republic, refused to accept Jewish refugees. Perhaps the Wannsee conference would never have happened if the Evian conference hadn't failed.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, I was the only one of my family to survive. My wonderfully gifted brother Ralph, was taken from our Berlin apartment by the Gestapo in January 1943 and put on a transport to the east. He was seventeen and a half years old at the time. Neither my mother nor I were at home at the time. When mother came home, the apartment was sealed. A neighbour then told her what happened. My mother didn't wait for me. She herself turned herself into the Gestapo to accompany my brother. But she left a message for me with the neighbours when I came home. They should tell me the following, "I'm going with Ralph, wherever that might be. Margaret should try to make her life". That was the last I ever heard from my mother and brother at the time. I was 21 years old.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, And at that moment, I was all alone in Berlin without my mother or my brother and no other family members. I managed to find good people who helped me. These people did something that could have cost them their lives. They shared their homes and their food with me. I had about sixteen helpers and many different shelters where I was hidden for shorter or longer periods of time and often in a very precarious situation until fifteen months later, in April 1944, I was arrested and deported to the camp Theresienstadt. It was mainly many old people who were deported to Theresienstadt. Married couples were separated. The old people had to sleep in a small room in two storey wooden frames with straw mattresses.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, There was nothing else other than the wooden bed where you could hang up your few items on a nail. There were no toilets or washing facilities. They had to go outside to primitive latrines and wash at the well in the cold winter too. They got less to eat than the workers. They starved to death and died miserably just a short while after their arrival.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, At the beginning of February 1945, a transport of more than 200 men and twenty women arrived from Birkenau, these people who previously had been dispatched from Theresienstadt to work on an Eichmann project to build alternative quarters for the high security main office. Adolf Friedlander had come back to Theresienstadt. On this transport, we met by chance in the corridor of the barracks where we were both living on different floors. I didn't recognise him because he had his arm in a sling. His head and neck were also bandaged. When he got closer, he called me by my name, Margaret, Margot. Because we had known each other from Berlin, from the Jewish Cultural Association.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, We were so pleased to meet someone from before. And we then tried to meet secretly, now and again, at the end of April 1945. I, together with others, was called to help with a planned transport when a long train with cattle cars arrived. We didn't know what to expect. When the doors were pushed open, I experienced something that I would never forget. People who barely looked human fell or were pushed out of the overcrowded wagon. You could hardly tell the living from the dead. Their eyes were sunken, only their noses stood out of their faces. Almost all of them were kind of striped pyjama prisoners clothes, just rags hanging off their bodies.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, Instead of shoes, they were wearing wooden clogs. Many had only one or no, none left on. Many had bruises on their legs, which were very swollen. Others were just skeletons. Something fell into my arms. A person so weak that I had to carry him. He was as light as a feather. Someone plucked my arm. Margaret, don't you recognise me? But how could I recognise this figure who told me he was an old cashbook? They all came from Auschwitz. That was the first time I heard the name Auschwitz, because we had always, ever only been told that the trains were going to the east. So Auschwitz was the east and that's where these people came from.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, Shortly before the liberation of Auschwitz on the 27th of January, they were sent on a death march. The SS did everything possible to ensure that the survivors didn't fall into the hands of the Russians so that the allies wouldn't learn of the full extent of the extermination in the concentration camps. These people had been on the road for almost three months. First of all, on foot in a long column, it was only men, even if it first glance they seemed sexless, like skeletons. Most of them had long since died, shot or starved, starved to death, died of exhaustion. At some point, the last survivors had been picked up, crammed into cattle cars and sent to Theresienstadt, which is one of the last camps that had not yet been liberated.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, They had no food. They were together with typhus sufferers and in terrible dirt. Many didn't survive, but there was still a few hundred or so who felt towards us at that moment "the East" got a name. At that moment we found out about the death camps and at that moment I realised that I would never see my mother and brother again. I no longer had any hope. I wanted to survive because I wanted to see my family again. What was the point of my survival now? There were many rumours circulating in the camp that the war would soon be over. A mood was tense.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, We noticed first from the behaviour of the SS men that something had changed. They were running around loading their belongings onto trucks, their possessions. That also included everything that they had stolen from us. We waited eagerly. At some point, the gate opened and the first trucks left the ghetto. We could hardly believe it. Were we soon going to be liberated? A few days later, it was May the 5th, the commander left the camp. An SS man stood at the gate and pulled in the swastika flag and took it with him.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, In vehicles that were still reasonably driveable. They sat tightly packed together and drove out of the camp in a column from the windows in the barracks where I lived, I could see the road that led to Prague that was actually strictly forbidden. But I still dared to look and I saw an open jeep with a red Cross flag stretched over the bonnet. A little later, this flag was flying at the command office. A strange mood spread through the camp without us knowing what was happening. But no one was cheering and no one was happy. No one changed their daily routine.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, The SS have disappeared. Have we now been liberated? How did it feel to be liberated? We had waited so long for this moment and now it was here, but we couldn't believe it. For three days we lived exactly as before. Even though the Red Cross was there, the Red Army had not yet taken Theresienstadt. Everything held its breath. Then the Russians took over the command office. The Soviet army had been marching along the road to Prague, just outside the camp. Since the early hoursm there were open trucks, cars fully loaded with soldiers. Tired soldiers were riding on tired horses and now the gates were open.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, I was standing at the open gate for the first time. There were no guards anymore. No one could stop me from going out. Nevertheless, I simply stood there. Am I dreaming? Is it really true that I survived? I carefully take a few steps out onto the road, but I don't want to leave. I simply want to see if it's true that I can go out without being shot. Next to me is Adolf Friedlander. We look at one another. We go through the liberation together on May the 8th, 1945, a moment that we will never forget. We were liberated.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, What was my mood? Was I happy no, I don't think so, because now I was about to find out what had happened to my beloved mother and brother. I don't really know exactly how I survived to Eisenstat. From the start I experienced the ghetto as if through a veil, every day I simply did what I had to do. Now I was liberated. But even that seemed unreal to me.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, We stood at the gate, unable to move, unable to do anything. After the Red Army had passed by, it became a little quieter. We waited to see what would happen next. Suddenly, everything was full of doctors and nurses who first tried to bring the typhoid fever under control. The lice-infested straw mattresses were burned. Everything was sprayed with disinfectant.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, Medicines were brought in and we were given soap and toothpaste so that we could finally wash and brush our teeth. Heavy trucks brought in crates and sacks with food for provisions and the kitchens, especially rice, so that the sick could get some light nourishment. Then something happened that we could hardly believe.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, People came to the camp. They were wearing, on the back of their jackets, large swastikas. Under the supervision of the Russians, they were now doing the dirty and heavy work that we had done so far. Now I realised that I was liberated and my first thought was: yes, there is a God.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, Adolf and I sometimes went for a walk. We would sit on a bench by the river and talked about everything that moved us. One day in June when we were sitting on our bench again, Adolf asked me: could you imagine a life with me? Adolf wanted to marry me, but there was more to getting married. So I had always thought I wasn't in love with Adolf. I was simply frozen.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, I needed time to become a person again, to be able to feel until now, feelings for me had only ever been associated with pain and memories. I felt exactly the same. Maybe it was this pain that brought us closer together more than being in love. We longed for a normal life. I said yes.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, Adolf gave me his father's wedding ring. Wedding rings were the only thing that wasn't taken away into Eisenstat. Adolf had always worn it throughout the camp period and managed to save it. I would never take it off at all. Adolf wanted to get married as soon as possible. On the twenty sixth of June 1945, we were married by Rabbi Neut House, according to the Jewish Rights.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, On the 30th of June, four days after our wedding, Adolf received a telegram from his sister Elsa from the USA that gave him a new goal. I think it was the 10th of January 1945 when we left and at this time in cattle cars, but they were supposed to bring us to freedom. And then, until July 1946, we were in Denkendorf in Bavaria in a displaced persons camp, and we left Germany in a troop transport to America.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, When arrived we in New York on July the 20th, 1946, we were warmly welcomed by Adolf's sister and husband, a cousin and friends. Unfortunately, I no longer have time to write about the 64 years that I lived in New York from 1946 to 2010.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, Together with Adolf, ever since the fifties, we went on many travels, at least thirty trips to Europe. But we only once went to Germany for three days to Munich. But we never went to Berlin, despite various invitations. And I've never wanted to go back to Germany and certainly not to Berlin. The country of his mother's murderers. After fifty-two happy years of marriage, my husband died on December the 25th, 1997. Now, I had to take my life back into my own hands.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, At the local senior club of the Jewish Cultural Organisation, I took writing courses where I began to write about my life. A documentary film maker heard about it and wanted to make a film with me. And I got an invitation from the Berlin Senate. So in 2003, I returned to Berlin for the first time.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, When I arrived in Berlin in June 2003, I went for a walk on the first day on a street that I knew well. I stopped and said: my Berlin, I'm so happy to have been born in such a beautiful city. In 2005 the film Don't Call it Heimweh came out about my first trip home after 61 years in Berlin. There I made more and more new friends. These friends encouraged me to write about my life in my mother tongue.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, After decades, I wrote my memoirs in German. When I couldn't fall asleep, I would take my paper and pencil to bed, give free rein to my thoughts and at those moments the memories gave me the right words. In the spring of 2008, when my memoirs were published as a book under the title Try to Make Your Life, it was the beginning of my fourth life. I still lived in New York, commuting across the Atlantic because I was receiving more and more invitations for readings from Germany.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, And at some point the moment had come: two years later, in 2010, I made it come true. At the age of 88, I came back to Berlin. Not only were there many friends there waiting for me, but I returned with a message that since that day I have been saying again and again to students that my readings after living in America for 64 years: I've come back to talk to you, to reach out to you, to ask you to become the contemporary witnesses that we will no longer have for much longer. It's for you people. People did it because they didn't recognise people as human beings. You can't love everyone, but everyone is due respect. There is no such thing as Christian, Jewish or Muslim blood. There is only human blood. We are all the same. What happened, happened. We can no longer change it, but it must never, never happen again.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, I'm not only speaking for the six million Jews who were killed, but for all those who innocently were murdered by the Nazi regime. It is for you, for your children, for your descendants. That is my mission. I say it again: be human. Ladies and gentlemen, you in this House represent millions of people on this continent, whose democratically elected representatives you are.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, This means a great responsibility because even now we are all facing major challenges. It is with great concern that I see that the Holocaust, like the Nazi war of conquest, and extermination, is increasingly being forgotten. We are the last survivors who can bear witness today.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, I see how the memory of what happened is politically abused. Sometimes it's even ridiculed and trampled underfoot. It is with disbelief that now, as a 100 year old, I've had to see how symbols of our exclusion by the Nazis, the so-called Jewish star star of David, are shamelessly being used today by the new enemies of democracy on the streets to style themselves right in the midst of a democracy, as victims.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, On a day like today, we must stand together so that the memory of the Holocaust remains alive and is not abused by anyone. Ladies and gentlemen, what has happened cannot change. I myself have had to experience how people have denied other people their humanity. First to marginalise them, to rob them, to burn their places of worship. And finally to murder them. This must never happen again.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, That is why we now must be vigilant and not look the other way as we did then. Hatred, racism and anti-Semitism must not be the last word in history. I have had to see with my very own eyes and experience where this leads today. On the 27th of January, we commemorate the millions and millions of innocent victims of the Nazis. Remembrance has a tremendous significance for us today.

SOUNDBITE (German), Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer, People, regardless of their skin colour, religion or origin, have to be treated as human beings. And that is especially true today. Humanity, tolerance and respect are more important than ever. For peaceful coexistence. That is my wish on this important day of remembrance. And commemoration for the world, for Europe, for all of us. Thank you for your attention.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Address by Margot FRIEDLÄNDER, German Holocaust survivor, writer and Minute of silence

Info

Description

People

Tags

Related media

Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament

Holocaust Commemoration