Holocaust Atrocities Told By Auschwitz Survivor Tova Friedman
By Denis J. Kelly
Tova Friedman of Highland Park, one of only a handful of children to be liberated 70 years ago from the horrors of Auschwitz, in Southern Poland, Nazi Germany’s concentration and extermination camp, told an assembly of first year students at Watchung Hills Regional High School (WHRHS) on Wednesday, Dec. 23, she still bears on her arm the tattooed number given her by her tormentors.
On her arm is the tattoo: A27633. “Don’t let anyone try to tell you that it didn’t happen,” said Friedman, 76, who was 6-years-old when she was liberated from Auschwitz. Her experiences are captured in a book and a documentary created by 1963 Hope College alum, Milton Nieuwsma. The book, published in 1998, is titled, “Kinderlager: An Oral History of Young Holocaust Survivors.”
Available on Amazon, www.amazon.com/Kinderlager-History- Young-Holocaust-Survivors/dp/0823413586. It was later made into a 2005 Emmy Awardwinning documentary, “Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah.”Available on Amazon, www.amazon.com/Surviving-Auschwitz- Children-Milton-Nieuwsma/dp/1596870729 A year later, Nieuwsma won a second Emmy for his film, “Defying Hitler.”
Friedman is one of three child survivors of Auschwitz who are profiled in the book, the documentary and the film. She began her talk at WHRHS in December by showing the students about 10 minutes of historic news reports about the Nazi Germany’s concentration camps and their liberation. The documentary included raw film footage of the survivors and the facilities. It is all preserved in the grainy film quality of the day.
Nieuwsma had been a newspaper reporter for first the Holland Evening Sentinel then the Chicago Tribune, and he had worked at a radio station in Detroit, before he worked as a public information officer at Wayne State University, Detroit. He earned a master’s degree from the University of Illinois-Springfield. And in 1994, he was teaching journalism at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, when and where he met Tova Friedman.
Friedman had come to America when she was 12, about 6 years after liberation from Auschwitz. She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Brooklyn College, and her first master’s degree in Black Literature from City College of New York (CCNY). Her second advanced degree was a master’s degree in Social Work from Rutgers University, where she met Nieuwsma.
She has had a career in New Jersey providing psychotherapy services to individuals, families, programs and agencies, and as executive director of Jewish Family Service of Somerset, Hunterdon and Warren Counties. She has four children and five grandchildren.
She and her family at one time lived in Israel for 10 years, where she taught at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Friedman was accompanied to WHRHS by her husband, Maier Friedman. She was introduced to the audience by WHRHS English Teacher Maggie Violette-Birnberg, who is a neighbor of the Friedmans in Highland Park.
(above, l-r Maier Friedman, husband of Tova Friedman; WHRHS English Teacher Maggie Violette-Birnberg, who is a neighbor of the Friedmans; guest speaker Friedman; student Joseph Denisco; and Principal George Alexis.
