Holocaust survivor Manya Friedman was a guest speaker at the W.E.B. Du Bois History Club seminar held at the MSC auditorium Monday, Jan 30. Friedman is a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., who visited Prairie View to enlighten students on the horrific details of her survival.Seminar attendee Latoya Crain, a junior communication studies major, said, “The seminar was very informative and I appreciated Mrs. Friedman sharing her story because I realized how hard that was for her.” Crain stated that the most touching part for her was, “when she said that her parents brought her a suitcase of her clothing and she did not realize that was the last time she would ever see her parents again.”
Historians describe the Holocaust as the genocide of European Jews and others by the Nazis during World War II. It was the Nazi program of exterminating Jews under Hitler and was an act of great destruction and loss of human life. According to www.historyplace.com, more than six million Jews were killed during the holocaust, with some three million people killed in Friedman’s home country of Poland alone.
Born on Dec. 30, 1925, in Chmielnik, Poland, Friedman grew up in a small Jewish community with roots as far back as the 16th century. She was nurtured in a family with two younger brothers and many loving relatives. She says that she was just an average 13-year-old girl, enjoying life with her friends in a public school when her family moved to Sosnowiec, a large city right outside of Germany.
Friedman said that she experienced anti-Semitism for the first time shortly after moving to Sosnowiec. “My family and I tried to leave and go back to my hometown of Chmielnik, but after traveling for five miles, the railroad tracks were bombed forcing us to walk back to Sosnowiec. I did not know what lay ahead.”
On Sept. 14, 1939, at 2 p.m., German troops invaded Poland, occupying Sosnowiec according to www.historyplace.com. Friedman said that her father was captured that same day and assigned to a camp where he was forced to build army latrines. Just one month later, her mother was arrested for violating the curfew. Friedman said she hoped and prayed that when the war was over, she would one day see her family again. It was not until the war ended that she found out that both of her parents had died. “I was the only one left alive out of my immediate family,” she said.
Explaining her extended family,Friedman stated, “Only one aunt and four cousins survived out of a very large family.”
In the early 1940s, Friedman was forced to work for a German company that produced military uniforms and synthetic rubber tires. She later spent four months in a sanatorium suffering from breathing problems associated with inhaling carbon dioxide, which caused spots to develop on her lungs. One year later, the Nazis began deporting Jews from Sosnowiec to the Auschwitz- Birkenau concentration camp. Fortunately, Friedman and her family were saved from deportation because of their work permits. For the next several years, she was bounced from one labor camp to another losing contact with her family, which she never saw again.
Friedman said that the living environment of the camp prisoners left much to be desired. “The living conditions were terrible, we were starving and wrongfully mistreated. Sanitary conditions were unbearable and lice spread very fast. We were tattooed on our arms and from that day forward, we were no longer known by our names, but by the numbers on our arms. But they took away so much more than our names.”
Finally, in April of 1945, while at the Rechlin camp, the Swedish Red Cross rescued Friedman. “The Swedish were nice people and I worked in Sweden for five years before I got my visa to come to the United States,” she said.
When asked how she felt coming to the United States after everything she had been through, Friedman replied, “I was all alone, it was not fun but by then I was 19 years old and a very mature young woman.” According to www.humanitasinternational.org, 479, 174 immigrant aliens were admitted for permanent residence in the United States from 1936-1945.
Manya married, had two children and later one grandson. She now resides in Maryland in a town right outside of Washington, D.C. When asked what she hopes to accomplish by her speeches, she stated , “First of all, I do it in honor of those who were murdered during the holocaust. I want people to understand that those of us who survived do not want sympathy. The holocaust did not happen in the dark ages, it happened in the twentieth century. Much of what went on during the holocaust is still happening in countries like Iran and Iraq. We live in a democratic country where we are free to speak our minds. I want people to recognize what hate, discrimination, and prejudice can lead to. I speak about the holocaust to give hope for the future and try to encourage young people to get involved.” Friedman continued saying that “everything that happened was a memorable experience. The holocaust follows you around like a shadow. The most painful part is that my children grew up without the love of their family and grand parents. The hardest part is not having your family around to celebrate the most precious moments with.”
The seminar was co-sponsored by University Village, Phi Alpha Theta, and the Division of Social Work, Behavioral, & Political Sciences.