Holocaust commemoration within the Bundestag: “I heard the shots, the dogs, their screams, then silence” | EUROtoday

On Wednesday afternoon, Tova Friedman stands on the lectern within the Bundestag and calls the plenary session. “Don’t forget us,” she says in English. Then she repeats the phrase in Yiddish: “Farges unz nisht.” The 87-year-old American got here to Berlin to offer the annual memorial speech on the Day of the Victims of National Socialism. She quotes the Yiddish sentence from a recent witness report by her father, who describes a scene earlier than the deportation to Auschwitz, the biggest German extermination camp.

“Mothers clung to their little children, their desperate and pitying looks fixed on the eyes of their little ones, full of grief and sadness; they felt that their end was near, and helplessly they raised their hands to heaven and asked: Lord in heaven, why have you given us such a terrible death sentence?”, Friedman quotes from her father’s memoirs. “As the doors of the cattle car were closing, a rabbi my father knew called out to him, ‘Don’t forget us!’ and he repeated it in Yiddish, ‘Farges unz nisht’.”

That’s precisely why Friedman got here to Berlin. In order to not overlook and to recollect. Just 5 years in the past, this is able to have been unimaginable for her, the psychotherapist instructed the “Jüdische Allgemeine” earlier than the speech. She now not wished to listen to the German language. And there was nonetheless the worry of German Shepherds. But then she began a TikTok channel together with her grandson on which she defined National Socialism and at present’s anti-Semitism – and was invited to Germany for the primary time to talk to college students in regards to the horrors she had skilled.

She will even report on this within the Bundestag on Wednesday. “I have no siblings, I have no uncles and aunts, and I never met my grandparents or my great-grandparents because of what was done to millions of Jews during World War II in the name of a dehumanizing ideology – anti-Semitism,” she says. “An ideology that has corrupted moral judgment, undermined institutions and ultimately made ordinary people complicit in unprecedented crimes.”

She talks about her earliest reminiscence of being within the Tomaszów Mazowiecki ghetto, which the Germans constructed throughout their occupation of Poland. She repeatedly needed to disguise below a desk in a totally overcrowded condo as a result of the SS focused previous folks and youngsters. “The most defenseless,” says Tova Friedman. “My grandmother was shot outside our house while I was hiding. I heard the shots, the dogs, their screams, then silence.”

“Mom, where are all the people?” she later requested her mom in a pressured labor camp the place her dad and mom had been pressured by the Germans to work in a munitions manufacturing facility below hostile circumstances. “Selections,” her mom replied. “She didn’t have to say anything else,” Friedman says. “When I was five, I knew. People were selected to kill.”

“Her heart always remained in Auschwitz”

And then Auschwitz. Head shaved upon arrival, garments taken away, starvation, thirst, tiredness. “They had four gas chambers open,” mentioned Friedman within the Bundestag, holding up 4 fingers. “They didn’t want to open a fifth one on Sunday. A miracle.” She was 5 and a half years previous on the time – and at present she is among the few survivors who’ve seen the within of a gasoline chamber wing. “The door to the gas chamber never opened,” she instructed “Spiegel” on Monday. “Instead, we should get dressed again. We never found out why.”

They have been additionally saved alive by their mom’s guarantees that they’d be capable to meet a terrific household after Auschwitz: sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews. The horrible life will finally be over. Then you possibly can have fun all Jewish holidays collectively. In reality, she and her mom have been two of 9,000 prisoners left behind within the camp when the SS left the realm and despatched tens of 1000’s of prisoners on demise marches. They had hidden below the piles of corpses to keep away from being taken away.

But again in Poland, Tova Friedman’s mom found that her complete household had been murdered. “She didn’t want to go on living,” says the speaker. “She had survived physically, but her heart had always remained in Auschwitz.”

In the Bundestag, Friedman repeatedly turns round and appears the members of all parliamentary teams within the eyes. As a Zionist, she additionally needs to offer her listeners a message about Israel. “For us, Israel is not just a place on the map,” she says. “After the Holocaust, it became a moral and existential necessity – the security that Jewish life would never again depend solely on the mercy of others.”

In the meantime, nevertheless, “most of the world” has turned towards Israel. “Shouts of ‘Gas the Jews!’ can be heard on the streets of New York, Paris and Amsterdam,” she says. Then she deviates from her speech manuscript and adds: “And maybe in Berlin too, I don’t know, but I suspect so.”

At the end of her speech, Friedman made an appeal to the MPs, ministers and heads of the constitutional bodies present. She was warmly welcomed in Germany and met many people who took the fight against anti-Semitism seriously. However, this fight must be waged even more resolutely. “I hate to break it to you, but that’s not enough,” she criticizes. “You should take your nation again from the horrible anti-Semitic organizations. Not so gently! I hope with all my coronary heart that we grow to be a bit stricter.”

The memorial hour was previously opened by Bundestag President Julia Klöckner. For Jews, “it has also become more dangerous in our country,” she said. The CDU politician recalled the response of the mothers and fathers of the Basic Law to the dehumanization of millions by the National Socialists: “Human dignity is inviolable,” as it says in the first sentence of Article 1 of the Basic Law. “Immediately after the collapse of civilization, it was a thunderbolt,” said Klöckner. The Shoah in particular showed where it would lead if people were only seen as part of a collective.

In her speech, Klöckner also addressed the challenges of the culture of remembrance in an immigration society. Some immigrants said, “This just isn’t my story. This just isn’t my household’s story,” she mentioned. “I say: If it’s supposed to be your country, it’s your story!” The “reason of state” is defended “not only outside our borders”. “Our reason of state begins on Berlin’s Sonnenallee, in front of the main synagogue in Munich, in the schoolyards, in the lecture halls, on X and on TikTok.”

Political editor Frederick Schindler studies for WELT in regards to the AfD, Islamism, anti-Semitism and justice points. His column “Counter Speech” seems biweekly. It was revealed in September 2025 Book in regards to the AfD politician Björn Höcke.