Margot Friedländer, a Holocaust survivor, has passed away. This was announced by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Friday evening. “The news of the death of Margot Friedländer fills me with deep sorrow. She has gifted our country with reconciliation – despite all the harm that the Germans had inflicted upon her as a young person. For this gift, we can never be thankful enough” Steinmeier praised the deceased. “Margot Friedländer experienced and survived the Shoah as a child and as a young woman. ‘Try to make your life’: This was the last message left to her by her mother before she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there in 1943. For Margot Friedländer, who survived in hiding and eventually also her deportation to Theresienstadt, this sentence became a legacy and a guiding principle of her life” the Federal President remembered. “In old age, Margot Friedländer returned to her hometown of Berlin from the USA, to that city where she had been humiliated, threatened and persecuted. And until her old age, she reported on her fate here and throughout Germany, advocating for democracy and human rights and combating hatred and all forms of racism, antisemitism and hostility” so Steinmeier. “She knew what people could do to each other. And that is why it was so important to her that the memory of the destruction of law, freedom and democracy be carried forward. She shared her memories with us so that what had happened would not happen again. For this, she was often honored and I had the privilege of awarding her the Great Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany” the Federal President expressed his gratitude. “We bow before Margot Friedländer, this wonderful Berlin-born German Jew” concluded the German head of state.
A Legacy of Resilience and Reconciliation
