Holocaust survivor recalls childhood years in Auschwitz

CEDAR RAPIDS — Before she could even read or write her own name, the only thing 4-year-old Tova Friedman still owned was turned into a number.

“OK, what’s your name?” her tattooist asked after her prisoner number was tattooed into her arm at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“Tola Friedman,” the little girl replied with her then-given name.

“No, no — that’s not your name anymore,” the woman replied. “Repeat after me: Your name is 27,633.”

Together, they patiently repeated the number, helping the child with no formal education memorize the way she would be required to identify herself at daily roll calls. Today, the number, unfaded both on her skin and in her mind, is proof of her experience to a world where her history is quickly fading from the public’s memory.

Friedman was 4 when she was sent to the labor camp with her parents, and 6 when she and her mother were packed into a cattle truck to go to Auschwitz II, known as the Birkenau extermination camp. Her father was sent to Dachau.

After six months in Birkenau, she emerged as one of the youngest people to be liberated, and one of only a handful of Jews to live after entering a gas chamber.

For decades, she has spoken about how she and her parents survived Jewish ghettos and concentration camps. Soon, the newly-minted author of “The Daughter of Auschwitz: My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope,” now 84 years old, will share her story in Cedar Rapids.