Margot Friedländer

Anni Margot Friedländer (; 5 November 1921 – 9 May 2025) was a German Holocaust survivor and public speaker.

Born and raised in Berlin, she was forced to go into hiding when her mother and brother were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943. Margot was captured in April 1944 and deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp, but survived. After emigrating to the United States with her husband in 1946, she eventually returned to live in Berlin in 2010 and began speaking to German youth about her experiences in Nazi Germany and surviving against all odds. She received various honours and awards for promoting human rights and fighting against antisemitism, including the Federal Cross of Merit.

Early life Friedländer was born Anni Margot Bendheim in Berlin on 5 November 1921 and raised on in the district. Her family owned a button factory that supplied to local fashion studios in the Jewish textile quarter. When she was 11 years old, the Nazis came to power. She enrolled at an arts and crafts school in Berlin in 1936, In 1938, at the age of 17, Friedländer witnessed the pogrom against Jewish shops and synagogues. Her mother was keen to emigrate but her father, who was a war veteran, would not leave the country. Other sources claim that her father emigrated to Belgium soon after her parents divorced and before the war began.

On 20 January 1943, Friedländer was returning home when she noticed a man standing outside the door of the family's apartment on the second floor. She could not leave, so she hid her Jewish star and walked past him, continuing instead to a neighbour's apartment on the third floor. The neighbour confirmed that the Gestapo had visited and arrested 17-year-old Ralph. Friedländer's mother had not been in the apartment at the time, and fled to a Jewish couple in Kreuzberg who were her friends, later turning herself in to the Gestapo in order to protect her son.

In January 1943, her mother and brother were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp, where they were murdered. Friedländer's father was also murdered at Auschwitz. She described life in the camp as "cruel" and only survived because she arrived near the end of the war.

Immediately after the liberation, Adolf proposed to her. She said, "I wasn't in love with Adolf. I needed time to become human again. It was the same for Adolf. The pain brought us closer together than being in love." They were married at Theresienstadt by a rabbi on 26 June 1945, six weeks after the liberation. They then spent a year in a displaced persons camp in Deggendorf, Lower Bavaria. She decided to make it her mission to tell young people about her experiences in Nazi Germany and explained, "My brother did not have a chance. But the young people today do".

Friedländer died in Berlin on 9 May 2025, at the age of 103,

Margot Friedländer Prize In 2014, the created the , an annual award in her honour to help young people in fighting antisemitism and racism.

Honours and awards On 9 November 2011, Friedländer was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit from President Christian Wulff at Bellevue Palace.

She received the German Jewish History Award from the Obermayer Foundation in 2018.

In June 2021, she was awarded the Jeanette Wolff Medal for special merits in Christian-Jewish dialogue.

On 25 May 2022, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Freie Universität Berlin.

On 4 July 2022, Friedländer was awarded the Walther Rathenau Prize for outstanding lifetime achievement in foreign policy at a ceremony in Berlin. German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier praised her for "working for democracy and human rights and in fighting hatred and all forms of antisemitism and prejudice".

On 23 January 2023, Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey presented her with the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Memorial plaque

A plaque was placed on the ground in front of the building where she used to live in Kreuzberg. The plaque, inscribed in German, reads "Here lived Margot Bendheim, born in 1921, deported to Theresienstadt in 1944, survived". The title was her mother's final message to her. It was awarded the Einhard-Preis.

She appeared in the series finale of Joanna Lumley's Great Cities of the World, which aired on ITV on 31 March 2022.

In the summer of 2024, she appeared on the cover of German Vogue for an issue themed "love". In the interview for the article, she noted the rise in antisemitism and far-right nationalism, saying "Look toward what brings us together. Be people. Be sensible".