Lili Friedman is a child survivor from the Holocaust and a longtime supporter of our program here at Crestwood. Born in Poland at the outset of the war, Lili grew up in the Lodz ghetto, from where she remembers snippets of her childhood. She and her family were deported to Auschwitz with the liquidation of the ghetto, and as a young child she entered into that place where so few children survived. On a trip to Yad Vashem she discovered a photograph of her mother climbing down from a cattle car, holding the young Lili in her arms. Lili and her mother were only in Auschwitz a short time, and she survived because one of the transports had been dispatched without her. She and the others were sent on to Stutthof and then Theresienstadt at the end of the war, where Lili lived through one of the death marches that marked the end of the Holocaust. She and her mother made their way back to Poland, but with anti-Semitism still in evidence, they headed west, through France and ultimately to Canada. Growing up in the 50s, she pursued her education and eventually met and married Arnold Friedman, a Holocaust Survivor from the Carpathian region whose story can also be found in this project.
Lili was interviewed in her home by Scott Masters and Savannah Yutman in July 2016.
Videos
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- 1. Early Memories - The Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz.mp4
- 2. Stutthof to Theresienstadt.mp4
- 3. Three Children.mp4
- 4. Lili's Memories of Her Father.mp4
- 5. Other Memories of Auschwitz - The Wafer.mp4
- 6. The Roots Trip.mp4
- 7. Return to Lodz.mp4
- 8. Leaving Poland.mp4
- 9. Coming to Canada.mp4
- 10. High School.mp4
- 11. College and Arnold.mp4
