Berlin honorary citizen: Holocaust-surviving Margot Friedländer died

The Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer is dead. It died on Friday at the age of 103, as the Margot Friedländer Foundation in Berlin announced. “With its death, Germany loses an important voice in contemporary history,” said the foundation.

The Friedländer, who came from a Jewish family and pursued by the National Socialists, had returned to Germany after six decades as an emigrant in New York. Since then she has tirelessly committed herself against forgetting. The young generation in particular was important to her. She regularly told her story in schools.

“One of the strongest voices”

Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced: “The news of the death of Margot Friedländer fills me with deep grief. She gave our country reconciliation-despite everything the Germans had done to her as a young person. We cannot be grateful enough for this gift.” Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) called Friedländer on the platform X “One of the strongest voices of our time: for peaceful coexistence, against anti -Semitism and forgetting”.

On Wednesday of this week, she performed publicly in Berlin. “Your last public words on the occasion of the commemoration on the 80th anniversary of the end of the war on May 7, 2025 were in the Berlin town hall: ‘For you. Be people. That is what I ask you to do: be people!'” – Your foundation remembered.

Big Cross of merit was intended for her

On Friday, Friedländer should have received the large Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on a public appointment. However, the date was canceled. Even in the memorial lesson for the 80th anniversary of the end of the war on Thursday, Friedländer no longer took part.

Friedländer had already received numerous honors in recent years. It became known far beyond the borders of Germany. “With great gratitude, we bow to their impressive life’s work,” said the Margot Friedländer Foundation in their funeral notice. “Your role model is the order and obligation.”

Family murdered in Auschwitz

Margot Friedländer was born in a Jewish family in 1921. Her mother and brother were deported from Berlin and murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Thanks to many helpers, she was able to go back in the first place, but was then caught and deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. She survived, like her future husband, with whom she finally went to America.

Nobody survived from Friedländer direct family besides her the Holocaust. Nevertheless, after the death of her husband, she moved back to her home, after the death of her husband. She came back to the country of the perpetrators and yet said: “Hate is strange to me.”

At the age of 96 she became an honorary citizen of Berlin. In autumn 2023, the ZDF dedicated a documentary drama to her – the pogrom night of 1938 was 85 years ago. Also in 2023 she founded the Margot Friedländer Foundation.

Reminder and obligation

Margot Friedländer’s legacy is a reminder and obligation, said Federal President Steinmeier. This is particularly important at a time when democracy is contested and anti -Semitism shows itself again. It remains “our responsibility to never let the Jewish community in our country down”.

The Federal President continued that he was lucky enough to often meet Friedländer. “I mourn a deeply impressive woman who personally gave me her friendship. I will always be grateful for this friendship.”

Berlin’s governing mayor Kai Wegner also praised Friedländer’s commitment to forgetting. The engagement in schools or universities and the talks of Friedländer with young people remained unforgettable, said Wegner on the platform X. “We will never forget Margot Friedländer and maintain an honorable memory.”

“A woman unshakable moral muts”

Many politicians expressed their grief in social networks, such as the former Greens chairman Omid Nouripour. The SPD chairman and vice-chancellor Lars Klingbeil told the “Reinischen Post”: “The death of Margot Friedländer makes me very sad. It was a voice that always warned us that really matters: humanity.”

Bundestag President Julia Klöckner called Friedländer a large -scale contemporary witness and recalled: “Yesterday 80 years ago she was freed in Theresienstadt.”

“A society without it hardly imaginable”

The President of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, said that Friedländer had made humanity their central concern. “Not only was she a warning voice of our time, but also had the gift of always seeing the best in her counterpart. A society without it is hardly imaginable for me.”

The World Jewish Congress also paid tribute to Friedländer. President Ronald Lauder said in New York that Friedländer had been a “woman unshakable moral muts” and a voice of memory for generations.