80 years after Auschwitz liberation, a survivor's powerful plea: 'We cannot forget'
Tova Friedman has the demeanor of someone with little time to waste.
There's an economy to her words, but the directness with which she speaks doesn't in any way minimize the power of her message: Humanity must never forget the horrors of the Holocaust.
Horrors that Friedman, 86 and still working as a therapist, witnessed firsthand.
She's one of a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, and as the world observes the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday, she knows that her message needs to be amplified for new generations so that those who suffered and died did not do so in vain.
But as Friedman, a child imprisoned at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, and her cohort grow older, worries are growing that the Holocaust is being distorted, denied and even forgotten.
"I share this story, like many others who do, because we cannot forget all those innocent men, women and children who were slaughtered just because they were Jewish," said Friedman, who also noted that the Nazis targeted others, including disabled people, gays and lesbians and other ethnic minorities.
"I tell the world to remember them. Memory is very, very important, " she said.
Early lessons as a child helped her survive ghetto in Poland
Friedman knows better than most the importance of words and warnings: From her earliest days, she remembers her mother telling her how to behave in the Jewish ghetto in Poland. Don't look soldiers in the eye. Don't cry or whine or complain. Don't do anything that will make them kill.
"My mother didn't cover anything up," Friedman said, and telling her daughter the full extent of Nazi brutality, even though she was still a small child, probably saved her life.
Friedman survived the ghetto, and later Auschwitz-Birkenau, but just barely. She remembers being tattooed. Having her head shaved. Being taken to the gas chambers with other children, being told to strip, and then, inexplicably, being spared.
The brutal experiences of survivors should never slip from memory, she said.
"It’s a warning, a watch, to say look what can happen if we don’t stop hatred, stop being suspicious of each other, for any reason, whether it's skin color, sexual differences, politics or anything."
Can you name one concentration camp?
The Claims Conference, a New York-based, multinational advocacy group for survivors, their descendants and others interested in preserving Holocaust history, worked with museums, educational institutions and nonprofits including Yad Vashem and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to survey people across eight countries for the Index of Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness.
Some of the results were alarming.
Across the countries surveyed − the U.S., Romania, Hungary, Poland, France, Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom − many people weren't aware of the scope of the Holocaust. In the U.S., France and Austria, for example, 21% of people thought the number of Jews killed was 2 million or fewer − far below the actual number, 6 million.
While it might be difficult to comprehend the difference when the murdered number in the millions, the distinction matters.
"Each one was a person unto themselves," said Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Claims Conference. "The Holocaust went on for years across Europe, and the enormity of it is important. It's really shocking and troubling that so many people don't know that."
Nearly half of the Americans surveyed (48%) were unable to name a single ghetto or concentration camp − even Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Anne Frank was taken after she and her family were discovered, and where Tova Friedman nearly lost her young life; or Bergen-Belsen, where Anne Frank ultimately died.
Lack of knowledge about the horrors 'deeply disturbing'
A notable percentage of Americans (44%) also said Holocaust denialism is common and almost half of Americans (49%) surveyed said Holocaust distortion is common.
Schneider called the lack of knowledge about the Holocaust "deeply disturbing."
"It's more than just that people can't understand the Holocaust that should alarm us. It's not just facts and figures," but a lack of understanding how "hate unchecked can lead to horrific acts."
"Of course this matters for the Jewish people, but ultimately it’s not only about Jews," he said. "That’s one of the lessons of the Holocaust − it was an event that was meant to exterminate the Jewish people, yes. But the lessons are ultimately universal."
Reasons for hope, even as survivors are dying
A majority of people (76%) surveyed in the U.S. believe something such as the Holocaust could happen again, 30% more than the percentage of people who believed it five years ago. Schneider attributed the raised alarm to the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and a subsequent spike in antisemitism.
But not all the news was bad, and that's what gives Schneider hope. Americans overwhelmingly believe Holocaust education is important and should happen in U.S. schools: 96% and 95%, respectively, agree with those sentiments.
"We live in such a polarized society," he said. "It's so difficult to get that many people to agree on anything. Now what's really required is to align public policy with what people say is important to them."
He'd like to see schools and teachers supported as they teach this horrific but vital piece of history, and for it to be more than a day or two of instruction or a blurb in a textbook. "We need more textbooks and tools, more sophisticated technology so students can not only understand what happened, but also what the implications are for modern-day society."
A race against time to preserve survivors' stories
The Claims Conference has been recording the stories of Holocaust survivors such as Tova Friedman and others as part of its #RememberThis campaign. The group knows they're in a race against time, though: There are about 245,000 survivors still alive worldwide, according to the Claims Conference 2024 demographics report, and most of them were children when the Holocaust disrupted their lives and tore their families apart.
Their median age is 86.
"We are living in an era when institutions and facts don't have the same strength that they used to," said Schneider, when a lie or distortion can go viral on social media faster than traditional gatekeepers can contain the damage. Guardrails, thin as they were, are being removed from platforms.
"And this is happening at the same time that we're losing survivors and eyewitnesses," like the soldiers who liberated the camps and discovered the dead, and the barely living.
Tova on TikTok, teaching young people
Friedman, who lives in Highland Park, New Jersey, hasn't only told her story to the Claims Conference, or to classrooms full of schoolchildren, or to congregations.
She's written a book, "The Daughter of Auschwitz," but she's also reaching a whole new generation, thanks to her grandson, Aron Goodman. While she admits she barely understands TikTok (she was initially amazed when Aron told her about the reactions online, saying, "I didn't realize it was interactive"), their TovaTok account has nearly 515,000 followers and 10.2 million likes.
When it looked like TikTok might go dark in the U.S., Aron started an Instagram feed, as well.
She said she's happy the videos have caught on. "I wanted to teach the young people, because they will be here when I'm not," and she has no time for those who'd try to deny or minimize her story.
Asked if she might slow down, Friedman laughed. "Just the opposite! I don't have many years left, so I am speeding up. I've never gone so fast in my life."
But the rise in antisemitism worries her: "The world has turned against Jews, and people who've never even met a Jew are antisemitic," she said. "It's a mantra of intolerance.
"If we don’t learn to understand each other and stop hating each other, we may all end up as ashes eventually."
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Reach Phaedra Trethan at ptrethan@usatoday.com, on Bluesky @byphaedra or on Threads @by_phaedra.