Surviving Auschwitz as a Child — Holocaust Survivor Tova Friedman's Testimony

Tova Friedman was just a child in Auschwitz — one of the youngest to survive. Now in her eighties, she carries the memory of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust, and she has made it her mission to make sure the world does not forget.  In this episode, she shares her testimony: what she endured, how she survived, and why she believes telling these stories matters now more than ever.  This is a firsthand account from one of the last living witnesses to one of history's darkest chapters.

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HOST: JENNIFER (00:02):

Hello, welcome to this podcast called Finding Inspiration. It's a 20-or-so-minute weekly podcast where we interview someone with an amazing story. After the show, I know you’ll feel energized, invigorated, and inspired. I'm Jennifer Weissmann. Welcome to Finding Inspiration.

HOST: JENNIFER (00:27):

Today's episode number 26 is the second in this series called We Remember I had the opportunity to interview Tova Friedman. Tova is the author of the best-selling book called The Daughter of Auschwitz. She was one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz. And we're releasing this episode on the 84th anniversary of Crystal Na, also known as the Night of the Broken Glass when the violence started by the Nazis against the Jews in Europe. This is an unbelievable story of survival by this woman. And her theme is, we remember the forward of her book was written by Sir Ben Kingsley. Please buy her book and listen to the entire 30 minutes with Miss Tova Friedman.

HOST: JENNIFER (01:28):

I was walking through the airport a couple of weeks ago and saw your book, "Daughter of Auschwitz", and I thought, wow, this looks like a book I need to pick up and read. I had no idea that you were the youngest survivor.

GUEST: TOVA (01:44):

One of the youngest!

GUEST: TOVA (01:47):

One of there. There are few, a handful of us,

HOST: JENNIFER (01:50):

A handful of you is Auschwitz's youngest survivors, a concentration camp. You're 84 years old. And in addition to writing this unreal, unbelievably moving, and disturbing book, you are now a TikTok sensation. And I wanna get into

GUEST: TOVA (02:11):

<laugh>. Yeah, that's thanks to my son. Aaron Goodman. He did it for his class to educate his class a little bit, and then it just, it just took off. So he's been doing it since

HOST: JENNIFER (02:27):

50 million downloads -- Tova?  You're famous.

GUEST: TOVA(02:30):

 <laugh>

HOST: JENNIFER (02:32):

it's your grandson, right? Aaron? Is that right?

GUEST: TOVA (02:36):

Aaron He's years 17 years old.

HOST: JENNIFER (02:38):

Amazing. Your message to the world is what?

GUEST: TOVA (02:43):

Well, it's tough to talk to a world that is falling apart. Right now there are so many terrible issues in America, especially, to be very wary, and be careful when one spouts hatred and anger towards somebody or something because if it's not checked, it can end up in gas chambers. People, ideas, everything. That hatred is extremely dangerous and very contagious. One person says something before you know it, and a hundred people are spouting the same thing. And there is a movement of hatred somewhere.

HOST: JENNIFER (03:34):

Do you think the world has learned the lessons of the Holocaust?

GUEST: TOVA (03:37):

I know, I don't know how much it's learned. I don't know. I don't think so. I think right now there's so much antisemitism in America. It is terrifying. One or two people say something in public, which is very effective. They speak well. They and other people joined them without thinking about the consequences.

HOST: JENNIFER (04:04):

I agree Tova. Like Kanye West very recently had some huge antisemitic rant and people chucked it up to -- well he's bipolar, so it doesn't matter.

GUEST: TOVA (04:14):

Well, that's what they said about Hitler. He's a mad, crazy person. My father said that he thought he was not gonna be a Chancellor long in Poland. He's crazy. People are gonna get rid of him. It's not true.

HOST: JENNIFER (04:31):

Take me back. Daughter of Auschwitz best-selling author, Tova Friedman. You were five years old?

GUEST: TOVA (04:39):

My first memory is two or three years old, and there was a ghetto in Maki where we all lived in very crowded places. And the shooting and then I knew everything kids knew and also cause my mother made sure that I knew because she thought that by knowing I, I'll be safe, I'll be safer.

HOST: JENNIFER (05:02):

Knowledge is power.

GUEST: TOVA (05:04):

Right.  I will know the danger, and I will learn self-protection.

HOST: JENNIFER (05:09):

So what was life like for you in the ghetto?

GUEST: TOVA (05:11):

First of all, we did live as a family.  At this point, we were still together. Mother, and father, I saw my grandmother, uncle, and people came and went. But slowly they were killed.  One of the earliest selections was my Uncle being killed because he was a very educated lawyer. He ironically came from Germany. He was a German Jew, and they told him to leave the country as soon as possible. He did.   But he thought Poland would be safe. And, he came because I think he had some relatives there that he met my aunt who was about 17, 18, my father's sister.  They married, and he was killed shortly afterward.

HOST: JENNIFER (06:04):

So you're living as a community in this ghetto. How many people were in the ghetto at this point?

GUEST: TOVA (06:10):

Gee, I don't know -maybe 13,000. All the Jews were put into the ghetto, and then Jews from other towns were put there also.

HOST: JENNIFER (06:23):

And were you wearing an armband at this point?

GUEST: TOVA (06:25):

Yes.  We had a white, I think it was blue or something like that. I don't remember exactly, but I think that's what it was. Yeah, everybody wore it, and it was a rule.

HOST: JENNIFER (06:36):

And that was to distinguish you as a Jew?

GUEST: TOVA(06:39):

Yeah. Well, first they stamped our ID card called Juda meaning Jew. And then the armband came.

HOST: JENNIFER (06:51):

At what point did you move from the ghetto onto a cattle car or however you got there to the concentration camps?

GUEST: TOVA (07:00):

That's much later. First, they killed most people in the ghetto by starvation and shooting.  And, many people were sent to Treblinka. They had each ghetto going to a different concentration camp. So this was a Treblinka destination. And then just a few people were left -- maybe 36 people left or something like that. The number is always between 50. I'm not sure of the exact, It varies because different witnesses remember different numbers, but they weren't more than a hundred. My father said it was 36 and we were the cleanup squad.

HOST: JENNIFER (07:43):

What was that?

GUEST: TOVA (07:44):

We cleaned up; whenever the Germans closed the camp, they made it look like nothing happened because they wanted to leave no witnesses. And they keep denying that they weren't killing anybody. That they were using people as slaves for, for slave labor, but not death. So they cleaned up, we cleaned up, we buried the dead.

HOST: JENNIFER (08:13):

So, your parent's job was to wash the sheets, clean the floor, and get rid of all the blood. Is that right?

GUEST: TOVA (08:22):

Exactly.  Everything was cleaned up. Make the place so that if the Red Cross were ever to come, there was no sign that anybody was killed or tortured. So in every town, they had Jews as clean-up squads. Also in camps, there were Jews who would take the bodies out of the crematorium. And they would clean their ashes.

HOST: JENNIFER (08:56):

Wow.

GUEST: TOVA (08:56):

They had the Jews doing cleanup everywhere in Poland.

HOST: JENNIFER (09:00):

So they didn't get their hands dirty?

GUEST: TOVA (09:03):

Exactly right.  A guy who would give orders to kill a thousand people will say, I didn't do anything. I never did the shooting. And he didn't, He didn't, He had his henchman do it. He didn't clean up, he didn't take touch the dead bodies. They forced the Jews to clean up the dead bodies. So he didn't, It's very interesting, you know.

HOST: JENNIFER (09:29):

That they were thinking ahead?

GUEST: TOVA (09:31):

Yes, absolutely. I think it's like any crime you can read about a killer who wears gloves and ensures he does. Without all the fingerprints he can't be caught. I think they had the same kind of philosophy. Leave no witnesses. This was the order from Berlin, from Hitler! Leave. No. Witnesses.

HOST: JENNIFER (10:00):

You're living in the ghetto as a 5-year-old girl.  Did you have any friends in the camp?

GUEST: TOVA (10:09):

No, there were no friends. I didn't go out of the house.

HOST: JENNIFER (10:14):

You did not leave the house?

GUEST: TOVA (10:17):

No, I was frightened to death. There were people outside being shot all the time. Maybe somebody came over. I do sometimes remember not playing, but being with another child who came to visit. There was no everyday life except my parents were with me.

HOST: JENNIFER (10:37):

So you're together with your mother and your father in the ghetto?

GUEST: TOVA (10:40):

Right.

HOST: JENNIFER (10:40):

The Germans later closed the ghetto so what happened next? 

GUEST: TOVA (10:43):

They took us to the next ghetto. It was called the labor camp. My parents worked a whole day and night at an ammunition factory.  Kids were roaming the streets on their own. There weren't that many kids left because they were already killed or sent to Treblinka.  They were gone. The kids were already disposed of, and the elderly were also killed early on. So only the people who had work papers and were strong, who could work in a factory were still alive, and some of their children came with them.

HOST: JENNIFER (11:21):

So were you just a lucky person at that point that you survived?

GUEST: TOVA (11:26):

Yeah, absolutely. The camp had rules, and my mother taught me the rules so that I didn't get killed while she was not with me. She taught me so much because she knew she couldn't be with me to protect me.

HOST: JENNIFER (11:46):

This is horrible Tova.  Just awful!  How old were you at this point?

GUEST: TOVA (11:48):

Five and a half.

HOST: JENNIFER (11:49):

After you moved with your parents together to the labor camp, what came after that?

GUEST: TOVA (11:57):

Auschwitz! Because they were liquidating and killing us. The Germans were again, moving people, cleaning up, cleaning up. We were the only witnesses; all from that camp went to Auschwitz to be killed.

HOST: JENNIFER (12:11):

Was your father separated from you and your mother at this point when you arrived at Auschwitz?

GUEST: TOVA (12:15):

Right. That's where the separation started. We went with the women. He went with the men on the same train. And when we arrived, he was tattooed because, by the way, tattooing only took place in Auschwitz. No place else.

HOST: JENNIFER (12:31):

No other concentration camp?

GUEST: TOVA (12:32):

As far as I know, there is no other camp that tattooed people. 

HOST: JENNIFER (12:35):

So you're five and a half years old, and they tattooed your arm?

GUEST: TOVA (12:39):

Not yet. A little bit later on. Not when I arrived. My father was tattooed when he arrived at Auschwitz. My mother and I were tattooed. I was tattooed on my old when I went to the children's, uh, children's place. And she was tattooed with women in her barrack.

HOST: JENNIFER (13:00):

Did they shave your head and give you a uniform even though you were a young girl?

GUEST: TOVA (13:06):
I didn't have a uniform because they didn't come that small. They gave me some clothing. I did not wear the stripe things. They didn't have all of them for children. They usually were bigger kids like teenagers. They didn't have one for five-year-olds, you know. So I just got, they took my clothes away, gave me a shirt, and shaved my head. Almost as soon as I arrived, took cut my braids. I had braids.

HOST: JENNIFER (13:32):

Oh, that must have been traumatic.

GUEST: TOVA (13:35):

Yeah, to say the least thing. I could see my mother without a hair, and that was traumatic. I couldn't find her because all these women were without hair and I was looking for my mother, and I couldn't see her. Hair is such a personal thing.

HOST: JENNIFER (13:51):

Yeah. It identifies you.

GUEST: TOVA (13:54):

Right.

HOST: JENNIFER (13:55):

What was a typical day for you when you were in Auschwitz? What, what did you do all day?

GUEST: TOVA (14:03):

I was with the children that were still alive. First of all, there was a lot of counting. After I got my number, there was a lot of counting.

HOST: JENNIFER (14:12):

Your number that was tattooed on your arm? Do you remember your number?

GUEST: TOVA (14:17):

I had to memorize that. I couldn't read or write. I had never gone to school and didn't know what a number was.  But I memorized the words of it and the sounds of the numbers.  It's tough to say what is typical. But you are starving. There's nothing you can do. In the morning, we had something to eat. Sometimes we went for a walk outside.  I was always curious. I saw a little hut or something, and the door was a jar. So I saw bodies piled from the bottom to the top of the hut.  The bodies were cut up. It must have been from experiments because Mengele's lab wasn't far. 

HOST: JENNIFER (15:20):

Oh my gosh, Tova.  I can't imagine a little girl seeing that. 

GUEST: TOVA (15:24):

I just said to myself: oh, that's where they keep them. They were frozen. They were stacked right on top of each other.  I still remember it, you know.  And I just went back into the kid's line. As we walked, there were bodies on the ground because they did not clean up the bodies.   And that's the joke when Hitler said to leave no witnesses.  When the Allies liberated us, there were thousands of witnesses everywhere. Dead and alive.

HOST: JENNIFER (16:01):

This is horrifying Tova. 

GUEST: TOVA (16:02):

It was like you were living a nightmare, and something was real. Something isn't real. Something happens. Some, it's tough to describe it. It's tough to describe how you live with corpses. Everywhere. Everywhere.

HOST: JENNIFER (16:24):

And at this point, you didn't see your father, Is that right? 

GUEST: TOVA (16:27):

I didn't see my father until much later. I didn't even see my mother with this point. 

HOST: JENNIFER (16:34):

Did you know if she was dead or alive?

GUEST: TOVA (16:36):

I didn't know. But once I was walking to the crematorium.  I heard a voice calling me, asking me where I was going. So I knew she was alive.

HOST: JENNIFER (16:50):

In the book, you said they took you to the crematorium, to the entry room, waiting to prepare to move you inside to gas you.   What happened?

GUEST: TOVA (17:01):

We don't know The person who co-wrote the book, Malcolm is a reporter, and he did a lot of research. And he said he didn't know. There are all kinds of reasons. First, it could be something that went wrong or a technical issue. It may have been that week when they got an order for Berlin and stopped the gas because the allies were coming.

HOST: JENNIFER (17:31):

You went to the gas chamber, something went wrong, and you left again. I was reading the book. I could not put the book down. The "Daughter of Auschwitz." It's a must-read in every high school, truly. I know that you say your mother was your protector, and one very chilling story that you told was when your mom grabbed you and had you hide by hugging a corpse. Tell me about that.

GUEST: TOVA (17:59):

It was at the end of the war. The Allies were on the way. So the Germans just went berserk. They were ordered to take every person from Poland and move them to Germany, away from the allies. I told you, leave no witnesses, right? So they were rounding up people and shooting people if you didn't go fast.  They had a line in the center of the gigantic camp, a line of people lined up. And if you didn't get into the line, they saw you outside. They would shoot you.  The Germans were shocked.  My mother came into my barrack, which was chaotic by then. And she just said to me, I'm not going on this trip to Germany.  I'm gonna die. She looked terrible. And she said, But if you survive, I don't want you to survive by yourself in this world.

GUEST: TOVA (18:56):

This is not a world for children. And she said, Let's see if we could hide here, and maybe we could survive here, or we'll die together. And she said, Will you die with me? I said, Yes. And she took me out of the barrack.  There was chaotic shooting outside everywhere. And how we even made it. I didn't know there was an infirmary, but she knew. My mother chose the corpse for me, I got in, and she covered me up. And I remember how she manipulated my body so I wouldn't be visible from the outside if you put a cover on top of the corpse.  The corpse was visible. She had uncovered the corpse up to her shoulders.   The head of the corpse was outside, so when the Germans came to check they wouldn't see me.  The Germans came into the infirmary.  They went to the hospital and checked everybody. And, if the body moved and they couldn't get out of bed, they'd shoot it. They came in. But I didn't breathe, you know, I breathed into the floor so there shouldn't be any movement.  I understood what to do. Exactly.

HOST: JENNIFER (20:06):

You survived the war. You survived Auschwitz.  You and your mother left. You were probably skin and bones. What did everybody do when they left the camp?  Where did they go?

GUEST: TOVA(20:20):

We got an ID card from the Red Cross, so we could travel for free because we had no money. And we looked like the kind of people you wouldn't want with you near you or anything. On our way home, my mother kept saying: "Oh, you'll have all this family; you'll be so lucky. You don't know what kind of family you come from."   When we arrived home, we saw my Polish neighbor.  She said: "What are you doing here? Back, we thought Hitler killed you."  These were her words to my mother and I. 

HOST: JENNIFER (20:59):

Nobody was happy to see you. They preferred you died.  Horrific. 

GUEST: TOVA (21:05):

I lived in a huge city. Tomaszow Mazowiecki had 40,000 people and 15,000 Jews. Very vibrant city with a lot of theater. But I know there was Yiddish Theater, Six seven Yiddish schools, Zionist movements, sports arenas, and a high school. It was not a small city.

HOST: JENNIFER (21:41):

A vibrant city. 

GUEST: TOVA (21:45):

The city was known as a garment industry, and there were 100 tailors there. And in fact, the tailors even sewed German uniforms.

HOST: JENNIFER (22:07):

Very vibrant city. So you go back, and your neighbors are not happy to see you,

GUEST: TOVA (22:12):

They hated seeing us back. And had no place to go.  Later, the Jewish community got organized, and the Red Cross came, and they helped us with food. But in the beginning, there was nobody there when we came. There was no one there, maybe a few families. So we had no place to go. Our home was ruined. My mother took me to a place where all I saw were rocks. We spent quite a bit of time in a cellar and we were lucky that the person didn't throw us out of the celler.

HOST: JENNIFER (22:48):

You said it was an appointment everyone kept: if you survived, you went back to the last place you lived. 

GUEST: TOVA (22:59):

It was an unwritten statement. I think it's true now too. I was in a park recently with my grandson. I lost him in this big park. It was a carnival. He disappeared. So I didn't move from the place. And he came back to the place where he saw me last. And that's how we found each other after the war. You instinctively wanna go back to the place you saw each other last. So people from the town, we had to see who's alive, who's coming back. And for my mother, nobody came back. There was a tragedy in her life that it's still part of my pain for her.  I don't think I ever got over her pain. She died at 45, all the things she promised me: "Oh, you'll have, you'll have aunts and uncles and cousins, and they're rabbis, and they're scholars, and they're wonderful people. You will never be alone again."  All that stuff. Nobody came back. Not one cousin came back. 150 people were murdered. She was the only one left. And she didn't wanna leave the city. She didn't wanna live anymore.

HOST: JENNIFER (24:12):

One day there was a little bit of good news, right? Somebody came back.

GUEST: TOVA (24:17):

First of all, three aunts came back from my father's side. His three sisters. So right away we had money already because they were excellent tailors. And we moved in together, we lived together. And then, one of them was killed by the antisemitic group that roamed around the city.

HOST: JENNIFER (24:44):

Unbelievable. Tragic.  Your Aunt survived a concentration camp only to be murdered by her neighbors in her own home city. But your father did come home, which was fantastic,

GUEST: TOVA (24:49):

 Ironically enough, my father came the day the newspaper covered his sister's killing. And her picture was on the front page when he got off the train, and she's lying with her head bloody.  She was shot to death. 

GUEST: TOVA (25:10):

Shot in the head.

GUEST: TOVA (25:11):

My father returned, and we lived in Poland for a few years because my mother wouldn't go anywhere. She wanted to see who was coming back. She was positive that somebody's gotta come back. Nine brothers and sisters, nobody came back.  Not one person. 

HOST: JENNIFER (25:29):

I wanna ask you a serious question. 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered. Do you have any survivor's guilt? How do you manage your life?

GUEST: TOVA (25:46):

No,  I never had survivor's guilt. Well, maybe depends on how you define it. I felt that I was saved for a reason.

HOST: JENNIFER (25:56):

What was the reason?

GUEST: TOVA (25:57):

First of all, to be a witness. You know, Hilter wanted to kill the children. Number one is to be a witness. Number two is to do something. So I leave this place a little bit better than I found it. So I became a therapist. I lived in Israel, I taught at the Hebrew University. I sort of all things that I thought -- well maybe when I die, it's gonna be a little different. People will say - well, she did this. I'm glad she was alive because she did such and such and such and such.

HOST: JENNIFER (26:35):

Let me ask a question about God. Do you believe in God?

GUEST: TOVA (26:41):

Depends on what day you ask me off and on. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I can't imagine a God who would watch this, be aware of it, and let it happen. And my mother gave up God in a way because her family was all the most religious.  They worshiped God all the time. Scholars, rabbis. And she said, if those great people were murdered, she wasn't interested in pursuing God.  On the other hand, God is free will. And that's another theory. I don't know. My husband died two years ago, and he wasn't ill.   I was married for 60 years. He died in five hours. And since that, for some reason, my life has changed. So as if God is saying, I took away the person you were closest to. I met him when I was 12. God said -- I will give you something else to do. And that is this book.  I wrote the book a year after he died during Covid with Malcolm, who lives in London.

 HOST: JENNIFER (28:13):

Please share the story of how you met Malcolm at the 75th liberation,the celebration of life where you met this report, Malcolm Brabent.

HOST: JENNIFER (28:39):

You've become a bestselling author very quickly. This book, "Daughter of Auschwitz", is front and center in every bookstore and airport store and everywhere I go see this picture of you and your mother.

GUEST: TOVA (28:54):

That's what I believe in God. Do you know why? There are a lot of Holocaust books written.   The number is around 15,000. That's a lot. And somehow, this particular book caught people's imagination. And I'm so grateful, I'm so grateful to Malcolm, to people like you, and the world.   They are letting me talk about my mother. The world knows her now. And I'm just so grateful that after I've gone, I'm 84, there'll be people who remember my family and me.  Survivors worry about who's going to remember us?  I remember others, I'm very dedicated to remembering those murdered. There'll be people remembering me because of this book. So that's what I think. Maybe, maybe God had a hand in it.

HOST: JENNIFER (30:01):

Tova, your story. It's amazing. It's amazing. And you are amazing Tova. If you had some message to tell the next generation, can you gimme like one sentence about what you want them to know about your experience in concentration camps? I want to briefly close with a message from you for the young people of the world to remember.

GUEST: TOVA (30:32):

I'm going to say something I didn't before, and maybe it's too corny. I don't know.  Please try to develop love in your heart rather than hatred. We have both. We have both. We have both. I don't know if it is an equal measure or not. We can hate as well as we can love. If you concentrate on love, you will be accomplished something with your life. If you concentrate on your hate, you have destroyed life for yourself and generations to come.

HOST: JENNIFER (31:25):

Tova Friedman, wow, bestselling author; the book is called "Daughter of Auschwitz". With co-author Malcolm Brabant. Everyone must read this book. They must give it out as a gift. It's an unbelievable story. I am so honored.

GUEST: TOVA (31:45):

Thank you. It's a good Hanukkah present.

HOST: JENNIFER (31:48):

It's an important gift.....Hanukkah present or Christmas present or whatever present.  Thank you again, Tova. You are amazing. Keep telling your story near and far.

GUEST: TOVA(32:00):

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And you are part of the people that can spread love.

HOST: JENNIFER (32:07):

I am so sorry for your experience. Thank you for sharing your story.

HOST: JENNIFER (32:11):

Thank you for joining us this week on Finding inspiration. Hey, I would appreciate it if you would click on that subscribe button and share this podcast with a friend. See you next week. I'm Jennifer Weissmann.