Holocaust, testimony award to Friedlaender, 100, survivor in the camps

The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, presented the 100-year-old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlaender with the Walther Rathenau Institut Award for her testimony on the persecution and extermination of Jews during Nazism. “Our democracy needs people like you,” Steinmeier said in awarding the award and thanked Friedlaender for her “gift of reconciliation.” Friedlaender knows what can happen if too few citizens profess democracy and she knows what people can do to each other, the federal head of state said, noting how – as a direct witness – Friedlaender takes steps to convey this. knowledge. Friedlaender’s family died in Auschwitz, while she survived internment in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. In 1946 she moved to the United States with her husband Adolf Friedlaender and upon his death, she returned to her hometown of Berlin, where she has lived since 2010. she Friedlaender she continually recounts her experience at institutions or meeting the kids in schools. “We can’t change what happened. But it must never happen again,” she stressed at the awards ceremony. “We must never leave the Jewish community again, it is our responsibility in the present and in the future,” said Steinmeier, underlining that not only Jews are called to raise their voices against hatred of Jews. “Everyone else, even non-Jews, must also wage this fight,” she stressed. Steinmeier then expressed anger that anti-Semitism is manifesting in the country. “On the street, in schoolyards, mainly on the Internet, right in our country,” she said. The recognition of the institute named after Walther Rathenau is awarded to people who have distinguished themselves for their work in foreign policy. Last year, the then Chancellor Angela Merkel was awarded.