Oral History Interview with Lilly Friedman

Lilly Friedman, born in Zarica, Czechoslovakia, describe her father, who taught Hebrew; her Jewish life; her relations with non-Jews changing after the Hungarian occupation in 1939; being rounded up by the Nazis in 1944 with her family and sent to Auschwitz; arriving in Auschwitz, the selections, and brutal murders of infants; being taken after three days to Płaszów, Poland with a group of girls for forced hard labor under brutal conditions; returning to Auschwitz in September 1944; how as transports arrived, women and children were taken straight to the crematoriums; being put in charge of 400 of the healthiest girls who were selected to work as weavers in a factory in Neustadt; the evacuation of the camp as the front came closer; the girls being transported to Mauthausen and then marched to Bergen-Belsen; the transport to Mauthausen by train under Allied bombardment, the casualties and their attempts to help each other; the terrible conditions in Bergen-Belsen and how the girls helped each other to survive; being liberated by the English Army in April 15, 1945; slowly regaining her health; meeting and marrying another survivor; going to the United States in March 1948; her daughter, Miriam, adds her insights about growing up as a child of survivors; and the impact the Holocaust still has on her and her sisters.

Date: 04/22/1985
Interviewer: Denise Krikstein
Interviewee: Lilly Friedman
Language: English
Subject: Concentration camp inmates--Selection process.
Death march survivors.
Death marches.
Forced labor.
Holocaust survivors--Marriage.
Holocaust survivors.
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Czechoslovakia--Personal narratives.
Infanticide--Poland--Oswiecim.
Jews--Legal status, laws, etc.--Czechoslovakia.
Jews--Persecutions--Czechoslovakia.
Weavers.
Women concentration camp inmates.
World War, 1939-1945--Conscript labor.
World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Czechoslovakia.
Women--Personal narratives.
Location: Zarichchia, Ukraine
Plaszow concentration camp
Kraków Ghetto
Auschwitz concentration camp
Neustadt O.S. concentration camp
Mauthausen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
USA
Permalink: https://hoha.digitalcollections.gratzcollege.edu/item/oral-history-interview-with-lilly-friedman/
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