Grief: “History of strength”: Farewell to Margot Friedländer

It was a moving farewell with a lot of prominence: the Holocaust-surviving Margot Friedländer in Berlin was buried with great sympathy. The burial took place after a funeral service in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee in the closest circle of friends. Friedländer died last week at the age of 103.

Among the funeral guests were Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, President of the Bundestag Julia Klöckner and Berlin’s governing mayor Kai Wegner (all three CDU). Former Federal President Joachim Gauck, former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and her successor Olaf Scholz (SPD) also came.

In the afternoon there was also a memorial prayer for Friedlanders in the central synagogue of the Jewish community of Chabad Berlin.

Friedländer was one of the most famous contemporary witnesses who survived the mass murder of the Nazis on the Jews. As a Jewish, she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Nazi era. After the Second World War, she emigrated to the United States, but came back to her home country at the age of almost 90.

Use for humanity

Since then, she has worked tirelessly for humanity and democracy at many events, against forgetting the Nazi crimes and against hate. The young generation was particularly important to Friedländer. The survivor regularly told her story in schools. She wanted to speak for the millions of murdered people who could no longer speak for herself.

At the funeral service, several speakers paid tribute to their life’s work. The chairman of the Jewish community in Berlin, Gideon Joffe, recalled that the Nazis murdered the mother, father and brother of Friedländer and she had been imprisoned herself.

Friedländer symbolized warmth and compassion

“But out of this past, they have become someone who did not want to hate but remember, not charges, but tell,” said Joffe. Friedländer symbolize what makes a person: warmth, sustainability and compassion.

The rabbi of the Jewish Chabad Berlin, Yehuda Teichtal, commented similarly: “Margot, your story is a story of strength and unbreakable humanity.” Friedland’s legacy is always trying to make the world a more human and better place.

“Demons of the past”

Friedländer words “be human!” Received generations, said Leeor Englishman, close friend of the Holocaust survivor, in his funeral speech. However, Friedländer had cost immense effort to work against disinterest and annoyance.

She never let go of the trauma of the experienced, even if she always performed positively on the outside, said Englishman. Again and again she plagued the thought of what would have become of all the children who were sent to the gas.

There was no conversation with Friedländer in which she did not entrust him to how much the demons of the past depressed them, said Engländer. After the attack of Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023 and the Jewish hatred that had been openly coming to light since then in Germany, Friedländer was horrified and resigned. “It started with us at the time,” she said.

“There is a little bit of luck somewhere in the world”

Singer Max Raabe sang the song “somewhere in the world” at the funeral service. Among other things, it says: “Somewhere in the world there is a little bit of luck, and I dream of it every moment.” Friedländer expressly wished the song.

The head of the funeral also attended the CEO of the media house Axel Springer, Mathias Döpfner, and the widow of the founder of the publisher, Friede Springer. Georg Friedrich Prinz von Prussia, the board member of the Margot Friedländer Foundation, was also one of the guests.

In the cemetery, actress Iris Berben, moderator Dunja Hayali, journalist Sandra Maischberger, filmmaker Wim Wenders and the former national soccer player Arne Friedrich also came to the cemetery.

As a Berlin honorary citizen, Friedländer receives a so -called honor grave in which the state covers the costs for care and maintenance. On the occasion of the burial, the flags of Berlin authorities and other buildings of the country blew on half mast. Friedländer is to be honored in Berlin with a large funeral service, but the appointment and place are not yet known.

Friedländer appeared shortly before her death

The Holocaust survivor completed its last public appearance on May 7, two days before her death at a memorial event of the State of Berlin on the 80th anniversary of the end of the war. In the red town hall she read – sitting in a wheelchair – passages from her book “try to make your life”.

In moving words, she described the hours of her personal liberation in moving words, which she experienced in 1945 in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Finally, Friedländer gave the guests the reminder on the way: “Be people!”