Holocaust Survivor Tova Friedman to Speak at Hope College

The public is invited. Admission is free.

The Oct. 10 talk will be preceded the previous day by a screening of the PBS documentary “Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah,” which highlights Friedman’s story. The film will be shown on Monday, Oct. 9, at 3 p.m. at the Knickerbocker Theatre with a panel discussion immediately following.  The public is invited to the screening, and admission is free.

Friedman, at age six, was one of the youngest of the 7,000 prisoners found alive during the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet army in 1945. More than one million people, most of them European Jews, were murdered by the Nazis at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, which was located in southern Poland.

She will use her vivid memories to speak on the rise of anti-Semitism and prejudice in the world.  She will be joined on stage by her daughter, Taya Friedman, with Emmy-winning writer and HASP member Milton Nieuwsma of Holland serving as moderator.

Nieuwsma had interviewed her and two other women who had been among the children liberated — Frieda Tenenbaum and Rachel Hyams — for his 1998 book “Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah,” and wrote and co-produced the documentary, which is based on the book and was produced in 2005 by PBS affiliate by WGVU of Grand Rapids.  The film centers on Friedman and Tenenbaum as they returned to Auschwitz in the summer of 2004 accompanied by their own children and reflected on both their experience at the camp and their lives before and since.  The Oct. 9 panel discussion will include Nieuwsma; Ken Kolbe, who was the documentary’s executive producer and retired in 2021 as general manager for WGVU Public Media; and Phil Lane, who was director and cinematographer, and is director of content for WGVU Public Media.

Friedman and her family immigrated to the United States after the war, and she was the director of a nonprofit social service agency for 25 years and continues to work as a therapist. In 2022, she published the memoir “The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope,” which she authored with journalist Malcolm Brabant.

She previously spoke at Hope in conjunction with a screening of “Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah” on Jan. 27, 2010, the 65th anniversary of her liberation from the Nazi death camp. The January 27 anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005.

Friedman will be available to sign copies of “The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope” following the presentation on Oct. 10.  Although the book will not be available for purchase at the event, it is being sold at the Hope College Bookstore in the DeWitt Center; Reader’s World in downtown Holland; and the HASP office in the college’s Anderson-Werkman Financial Center in downtown Holland.  Free copies of “Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah” will be available at the events on Oct. 9 and 10, and are also available at the HASP office.

Established in 1988, the Hope Academy of Senior Professionals (HASP) is a voluntary, lifelong learning program designed to enrich the intellectual, cultural and social lives of its more than 750 retired members. Through a variety of classes, lectures, book discussions, service projects, special-interest groups and events, members pursue avenues of study and engage in the exchange of ideas.  More information about HASP is available at hope.edu/hasp

To inquire about accessibility or if you need accommodations to fully participate in the event, please email accommodations@hope.edu.  Updates related to events are posted when available in the individual listings at hope.edu/calendar

The Knickerbocker Theatre is located in downtown Holland at 86 E. 8th St., between College and Columbia avenues.  The Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts is located at 221 Columbia Ave., between Ninth and 10th streets.