Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer: “It must never happen again” (Video)

Visit to the EU Parliament on January 27, on the day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism. Margot Friedländer, 100 years old and survivor of the Holocaust, remembered the atrocities of the persecution of the Jews, which cost the lives of more than six million people and the consequences of which she had to experience firsthand. “My mother didn’t wait for me. She turned herself in to the Gestapo to accompany my brother. For me, she left a note with the neighbors that when I come they should tell me the following: I’m going with Ralph, where that whatever may be. Margot is to try and make her living. That was the last I ever heard from my mother and brother.” Margot Friedländer also reported on her experiences in Theresienstadt, where she had survived the concentration camp. “In late April 1945, I was called with others to help with an awaited transport. When a long train of cattle cars arrived, we did not know what to expect. As the doors slid open, I saw what I will never forget. People , who barely looked human anymore, fell or were pushed out of the crowded train car. It was hard to tell the living from the dead.” In front of Parliament, she took the opportunity to make an appeal to the world. “People did it because they didn’t recognize people as people. You can’t love everyone, but respect is due to everyone. There is no Christian blood, there is no Jewish blood, there is no Muslim blood. There is only human blood. We are all equal. What was, was – we can’t change it anymore. It must never, never happen again.” Margot Friedländer also spoke about protests against the applicable corona measures, in which – for example by opponents of vaccination – comparisons with the persecution of Jews under National Socialism are repeatedly made. “At the age of 100, I had to see in disbelief how symbols of our exclusion by the Nazis, the so-called Jewish star, are shamelessly used today by new enemies of democracy on the street to stylize themselves as victims in the middle of a democracy On a day like today we must stand together so that the memory of the Holocaust remains true and is not abused by anyone.” On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated. Margot Friedländer’s mother and brothers were murdered there by the National Socialists.