Margot Friedländer: Try to Make Your Life
Eyewitness Talk On Experiences and Fates of German Jews during the Nazi Era (video recording available, in German)
For this series of talks, the Jewish Museum Berlin invited six eyewitnesses to tell a wider audience about their fates during the Nazi era. These witnesses are closely linked to the Jewish Museum Berlin as donors. A presentation of the objects, documents, or photographs they donated, readings from selected texts or the showing of film clips will precede the talks.
recording available
Where
Old Building, level 2, Great Hall
Lindenstraße 9–14, 10969 Berlin
Video recording of the eyewitness talk Margot Friedländer – Try to Make Your Life, 9 April 2018, in German; Jewish Museum Berlin 2018
Margot Friedländer
Margot Friedländer, née Bendheim, was born in 1921 in Berlin. After finishing school, she apprenticed at a tailor shop. Her family tried unsuccessfully to emigrate to the United States. From 1940 onward, Margot was compelled to perform forced labor. After her parents separated, she lived with her mother and her younger brother Ralph. In 1943, they made plans to escape the country, but Ralph was arrested by the Gestapo. Her mother confronted the Gestapo and was deported with her son to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered. She left behind a message for her daughter, which Margot brought into hiding: “Try to make your life.” The 21-year-old went underground, but was tracked down by “catchers” in 1944 and deported to Theresienstadt. She was the only member of her family to survive the camps. Together with her husband Adolph Friedländer, whom she knew from Berlin and met again in Theresiensadt, Margot moved to the US in 1946. She has been living back in Berlin since 2010.
This event is organized with the support of Berliner Sparkasse.
Margot Friedländer; photo: Scott-Hendryk Dillan, via Wikimedia Commons
Event Series: Eyewitness Talks (15)
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Eyewitness Talks
In this event series eyewitnesses tell of their fates during the nazi era (video recordings available, in German)
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Kurt Salomon Maier: Life and Trajectory of a Jewish Family from Baden
Born in southern Baden in 1930, he was deported to France at age ten. In 1941, an affidavit from relatives enabled his family to emigrate to the United States.
Eyewitness Talk
28 Oct 2024 -
Hidden in Enschede. Conversation with Contemporary Witness Herbert Zwartz
Part of the program accompanying the exhibition “My Verses Are Like Dynamite” Curt Bloch’s Underwater Cabaret, in German
Eyewitness Talk
16 Apr 2024 -
Ruth Weiss – Paths Through Tough Grass
Eyewitness Talk – Experiences and Fates of Jews during the Nazi Era, in German, with English and German subtitles
Video Recording
20 Sep 2022 -
Harry Raymon: Different from the Start
Harry Raymon was born in 1926 in Kirchberg, a town in the Hunsrück upland of southwestern Germany, to a family of Jewish businesspeople. In 1936, his family fled the Nazis and emigrated to the United States, in German
Video Recording
28 Feb 2022 -
In Conversation with Eva Schloss
On 27 January 1945, 15-year-old Eva Geiringer and her mother Elfriede were among the around 7,000 people who witnessed the liberation of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps by the Soviet Army, in German, with English subtitles
Video Recording
27 Jan 2021 -
The Family Album
Peter Schaul recounts the life of his mother, Dora Schaul, whose estate is part of the interactive installation The Family Album, in German
Video Recording
9 Nov 2020 -
Zvi Aviram: Brushes with Death
Zvi Aviram was born in January 1927 in Berlin as Heinz Abrahamsohn. From age 14, he had to perform forced labor in the arms industry. During the so-called factory operation on 27 February 1943, his parents were arrested and deported and he himself went into illegality, in German
Video Recording
16 Sep 2019 -
Sally Perel: Hitlerjunge Salomon
Sally Perel was born in Peine in April 1925. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union he pretended to be a Volksdeutscher and called himself Josef Perjell, in German
Video Recording
12 Jun 2019 -
Peter Neuhof: A Youth in the Shadow of the Persecution
Peter Neuhof speaks about his memories and experiences in an interview with Aubrey Pomerance, head of the archive (in German). His parents were active members of the German Communist Party (KPD) and were arrested in 1943. Peter was able to remain in the parental home, in German
Video Recording
3 Dec 2018 -
Hanni Levy: Surviving in Berlin
Born in 1924, survived the Nazi era in hiding in Berlin with the help of friends, in German
Video Recording
25 Jun 2018 -
Anita Lasker Wallfisch
Born in Breslau in 1925, Anita Lasker Wallfisch studied cello in Berlin from 1938. In 1942, Anita’s parents were deported to Izbica and murdered, and in 1943 Anita and her sister Renate were deported to Ausschwitz, in German
Video Recording
28 May 2018 -
Margot Friedländer: Try to Make Your Life
Margot Friedländer was born in 1921 in Berlin and has had close ties with the museum for many years. She reads from her memoir, which takes its title from her mother’s last message to her: Try to Make Your Life. Followed by a brief discussion with Aubrey Pomerance, Head of the Archive, in German
Video Recording
9 Apr 2018 -
Walter Frankenstein: Not with Us
Born in 1924 in West Prussia, Walter Frankenstein lived in Berlin from 1936. When deportation threatened, he went into hiding with his wife and their five-week-old son. The family managed to survive with the help of friends, in German
Video Recording
31 Jan 2018 -
Kurt Roberg: A Visa Or Your Life
Born 1924 in Celle, emigration at the end of 1938 via the Netherlands, return to Berlin in March 1941 and re-emigration in May 1941 via Lisbon to the USA, in German
Video Recording
4 Dec 2017 -
Henry Wuga: A Nuremberger from Glasgow
Henry Wuga was born to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father in Nuremberg in 1924. In 1938, his parents were able to send him to Scotland with a children’s transport, in German
Video Recording
23 Oct 2017
