Holocaust survivor on mission to make others aware

Arnold Friedman believes it’s his duty to inform contemporary students of the Holocaust he survived during the Second World War.

The Holocaust robbed Arnold Friedman of his childhood and destroyed his family.

“I can’t remember my mother’s affection, although she remained in my vision the same young woman as I last saw her,” he said. “As for my two younger brothers, who were 13 and 10 (and) two younger sisters nine and six, I only recall their names. I can’t remember their faces. I don’t know what happened to them.”

Friedman, 84, spoke about surviving the Holocaust at Toronto Holocaust Centre. The atrocities against his family began on Passover in 1944, when German Police arrested them all.

“They took us somewhere they called a secure place,” he said. “But actually it was a barrack near a gas chamber and crematorium… There was no difference between life and death because we knew our life was just postponement of death.”

Friedman said he is concerned that students only learn about war and victory at school, but not the implications.

“People of the future must know what the Holocaust is all about,” he said. “Children must internalize human that tragedy, because it’s more than that,” Friedman said. “The world must recognize that the primitive Dark Age has come back where man killed man to grab his possessions.”

As a Holocaust survivor Arnold Friedman said he felt t it’s his duty to make a new generation aware of this.

“As a Holocaust survivor my duty is to warn you like a man who went through a dark forest and was attacked by an animal. …. I have been there, I can tell you and that’s my function.”

About this article

By: Amirul Islam
Posted: Nov 8 2012 5:05 pm
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Filed under: Arts & Life News