How old is tova friedman
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The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope | Jewish Book Council
Unlike many other accounts of Holocaust survivors, Tova Friedman’s book provides readers with a child’s perspective of Auschwitz. At the age of six, Friedman was one of the concentration camp’s youngest survivors.
Her memoir begins with the chaos right before the liberation of Auschwitz, when Nazi soldiers set fire to many buildings and destroyed several crematoriums in a last-ditch effort to hide evidence of their atrocious war crimes. Friedman recalls being inside a children’s barracks while gunfire and explosions rained around her. Her mother appeared just in time to save her.
Friedman then flashes back to her memories growing up in the Jewish ghetto of Tomaszów Mazowiecki in German-occupied Poland. She was born in 1938, just two months before Kristallnacht, to young parents — Reizel and Machel — who were artists, Zionists, and intellectuals. Friedman writes about a childhood of malnutrition; extreme trau
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“I speak as a witness for the 1.5 million children who were murdered. I don’t want them to be forgotten. ‘Remember us.’ Those were their last words. ‘Remember us.’ And that’s what I’m trying to do.”
– Tova Friedman, New York Times Bestselling Author of “The Daughter of Auschwitz”
In the digital age, we have access to more information than ever before – but somehow, knowledge of the horrors of the Holocaust is slowly eroding.
Shockingly, a 2020 survey measuring Holocaust awareness in the U.S. found that roughly two-thirds of those surveyed didn’t know how many Jewish people had died. Even among younger people, education on the topic is lacking – 48% of the 18-to-40-year-olds surveyed could not name one concentration camp or ghetto. How can we ensure these memories are passed on before they are lost to history?
Tova Friedman, clinical therapist and social worker with the Jewish Family Center of Somerset, Hunterdon and Warren Counties in New Jersey, is one of the youngest living su
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Tova Friedman
Holocaust Auschwitz survivor (born 1938)
Tova Friedman (néeTola Grossman; born September 7, 1938) is a Jewish American therapist, social worker, author, and academic born in Poland. She is a Holocaust survivor who was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Friedman taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and later served as the director of the Jewish Family Service of Somerset and Warren Counties.
Early life
Friedman was born on September 7, 1938, in Gdynia, Poland, close to Gdańsk.[1] Friedman's family had moved from Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, and returned there as soon as WWII broke out. Five thousand Jews were forced to live in a ghetto formed of six four-story buildings in terrible conditions. The population of the ghetto decreased over time due to starvation, shootings, and deportations.[2] Her family was later transferred to Starachowice, where her parents worked in an ammunition factory.[1] When children began being deported from the area, Friedman's father made her hide in a crawlspace above their hom
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