Tova Friedman survived a labour camp and the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Now, with the help of her teenage grandson, she is using social media to educate a new generation
Tova Friedman was five when she got her tattoo. She was in Auschwitz and her tattooist was another prisoner, a teenage girl.
“Her hands were shaking,” she says. “How could I forget it?”
Friedman sits very erect on a sofa across from me. We’re in the house of her daughter, Taya, in a New Jersey suburb.
She remembers that all the children were made to line up and that some thought they might be getting an extra ration and pushed to the front. She remembers how the young tattooist with shaking hands worked, talking to her softly as she applied the letter and the numbers A-27633, one spot of ink at a time.