The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope

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SIMON: I have to ask you about life there. I have to ask you about death there. Dr. Mengele - Josef Mengele was at Auschwitz. I think it's fair to call him a human monster. An unforgettable and deeply moving story. Malcolm Brabant brilliantly evokes the world of the ghetto and of Auschwitz through the eyes of Tova Friedman, a small child who survived the brutality of the Holocaust - Jeremy Bowen

A powerful memoir by one of the youngest ever survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz. A new book is out today that tells the harrowing story of one young girl’s survival through the Holocaust. I spoke recently with that once young girl and her co-author, who’s well known to our NewsHour viewers. Tola Grossman was just a five-year-old Jewish girl in 1944, when she and her parents were shipped in cattle cars to the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. She would become one of the youngest survivors of the camp, freed as the Red Army swept across Poland and into Germany in 1945, and the depths of the horrors it inflicted on the Jews of Europe became apparent. During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale. Tova Friedman's memoir helps us see the Holocaust not only as a monstrous crime of history, but puts us inside the life and eyes of a little girl living in a ghetto of central Poland who was sent to a Nazi labor camp and even a gas chamber and has somehow lived to tell her extraordinary story. She still has a number on her left forearm - A27633. Tova Friedman's book, "The Daughter Of Auschwitz: My Story Of Resilience, Survival And Hope," written with the veteran correspondent Malcolm Brabant - and Tova Friedman joins us from London. Thank you so much for being with us.As I sat down to read The Daughter of Auschwitz I more or less knew what I’d be getting. A harrowing account of a child’s survival against all odds during a time of inexplicable torture, hatred and hopelessness. This book gave me so much more and thanks to her heart wrenching account of her days trying to live, simply see the next day, Tola gave me a book I’m unlikely to forget – just like that time was with Vera Gissing when she opened up her home to me. A new book is out today that tells the harrowing story of one young girl's survival through the Holocaust. We, as people, could do nothing to stop these murders, nor the next. There was no retribution. No eye for an eye. They were killing us with impunity. I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor's obligation to represent one and half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf.'

Tova Friedman, Co-Author, "The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope": Well, he was talking to me. I read this book with gratitude and urgency. Gratitude for the courage Tova Friedman has shown in deciding to share her story. We are all the beneficiaries of such powerful witness. The urgency comes from the knowledge that as time marches on such vivid voices are becoming increasingly rare. Read this book, cherish the lessons. It is a book rooted in the terrible events of another time, but the truths it reveals are eternal - Fergal Keane This was a true story vs. a historical fiction. The author wants to make sure that no one ever forgets what happened during the holocaust, and as human beings, we never should! She and her mother had been separated from her father at Auschwitz, not knowing his fate. They left the camp in April 1945. Her mother uttered one word: "Remember." SIMON: Ms. Friedman, let me ask you to tell us about the day you were - well, you were taken to Crematorium III.

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In a powerfully written book, THE DAUGHTER OF AUSCHWITZ (Hanover Square Press 2022), Tova Friedman recounts firsthand experiences of how she struggled to survive the most heinous crime of history, the Holocaust. She chronicles her story of survival, under the direst of circumstances, beginning with the Nazi invasion of Poland until her liberation from Auschwitz. Tova Friedman was only four years old when she was sent to a Nazi labor camp at the start of World War II. While friends and family were murdered in front of her eyes, the only weapon that Tova and her parents possessed was the primal instinct to survive at all costs. Fate intervened when, at the age of six, Tova was sent to a gas chamber, but walked out alive, saved by German bureaucracy. Not long afterwards, she cuddled a warm corpse to hide from Nazis rounding up prisoners for the Death March to Germany. I and my mother, the two of us, we didn’t know anybody else who survived. Just two of us walking into the town. And my mother met somebody she knew, a Polish neighbor, and the neighbor was coming towards us and my mother was so happy to see somebody she knew. And the Polish woman said to her, which I remember very well, “What are you still doing here? I thought Hitler killed you all.” So, the war did not end for us, for many of us, at the liberation.

In Zeiten wie diesen, habe ich das Gefühl, dass Hass und Ausgrenzung wieder zunehmen und wir leider aus der Geschichte nichts gelernt haben.Every so often a book arrives that demands to be read. This is such a book. It should be compulsory reading for those who know little of one of humanity's greatest crimes and the awe-inspiring bravery of those like Tova Friedman who survived to tell their story. But also for those who think of the Holocaust as ancient history. It is not. It is an eternal reminder that evil needs only ignorance to flourish. That is the true value of this remarkable book - John Humphrys Well, he was talking to me and I told him that for years, I wanted to write a book about my life. I started many times, but I just wasn’t disciplined enough and I’m not really a very good writer, at least not such a serious book. So, the first thing what he did though, he made a short program, I think, for your TV, right?

A ninety-two-year-old former lawyer asked octogenarian Tova Friedman, “have you ever heard of Auschwitz?” while uncovering a tattoo on his forearm. Whereupon she rolled up her left sleeve, revealing A27633 – and together they wept as they shared stories of their losses and triumphs. Tola Grossman is now Tova Friedman. And she's written a deeply vivid and affecting account of her life then and since. It's called "The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope." Tova vividly describes the horrors she witnessed during her stay in the camp. Horrors no young child should ever see. She was left on her own to roam the camp with other children while their mothers worked long hours slaving for the Nazis. When the end of the war came and the Nazis were clearing the camp, preparing to flee before the Russian troops arrived Tova's mother hid her amongst the dead, saving both of their lives by avoiding going on the Nazis' final death march.That was just one thing that caused her early death, because she died at 45 in America. She never stopped talking about it. She felt this guilt. She lost 150 people. Brothers, sisters, cousins, not a single person survived from her family of origin, not one. And she thought to herself that maybe she could have saved those two little girls, although it wasn’t realistic, she could not have saved them, but she thought she could have. And her guilt just permeated her life. Mit jedem Tag, der vergeht verlieren wir Zeitzeugen. Die Tage vergehen und immer mehr Menschen leugnen den Holocaust. FRIEDMAN: Exactly. By the time you are 50, you are useless. Anybody who cannot work 10 or 12 or 15 hours a day and survive and eat very little, they were useless. That were two categories - the elderly and the children. SIMON: I absolutely feel the need to remind people of details that'll be very hard to hear and horrific and maybe upsetting. And they should be. But it's the best way to understand your story. Even before you were sent to a labor camp, you were in the Jewish ghetto in a town in central Poland.