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One of Germany’s most prominent Holocaust survivors died at the age of 103 on Friday — just one day after the country marked the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Margot Friedländer, who was 23-years-old when she was captured after 15 months in hiding and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, died in Berlin on the same day she was honored with the Grand Cross of Merit, Germany’s highest honor, her foundation announced.
The cause of her death was not immediately clear.
“Margot Friedländer was one of the strongest voices of our time: for peaceful coexistence, against anti-Semitism and forgetting,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz posted on X Friday.
“She entrusted us with her story. It is our task and our duty to pass it on. We mourn with her family and friends.”
Friedländer was born Margot Bendheim on Nov. 5, 1921, in Berlin, and was an aspiring dressmaker and fashion designer until she changed her appearance and went into hiding in January 1943 after her mother and brother were hauled away and later murdered at Auschwitz.
Her father, a decorated war veteran who fought in World War I, was killed by the Nazis in 1942.
Friedländer was captured in April 1944 and arrived at Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic, two months later, where she witnessed the emaciated prisoners who had been forced on death marches from Auschwitz ahead of its liberation.
There she also met Adolf Friedländer – and they married shortly after the camp was liberated.
The pair moved to New York in 1946 and became US citizens. She worked as a tailor and later ran a travel agency until she decided to return to her native country 64 years later.
Friedländer visited Germany for the first time in 2003 — six years after she was widowed — and eventually moved back to Berlin in 2018, and spent her remaining years speaking out against the atrocities, hate and antisemitism she witnessed and experienced.
“She gave our country the gift of reconciliation – despite everything the Germans had done to her as a young person,” German President Frank-Walter Steimer said in a statement.
“We cannot be grateful enough for this gift.”
With Post wires
English (US)