Introduction
Hédi Fried, a Holocaust survivor, shares her experiences and insights in this powerful book. As one of the last living survivors, she feels a deep responsibility to educate future generations about the horrors of the Holocaust and the dangers of intolerance. With far-right nationalism on the rise again in many parts of the world, Fried's message is more urgent than ever.
Born in 1924 in Romania, Fried survived the Auschwitz concentration camp as a young woman. She lost many family members to the Nazi genocide but managed to survive along with her younger sister. After the war, she settled in Sweden and dedicated her life to educating others about the Holocaust.
In this book, Fried answers common questions she receives about her experiences during this dark period of history. She provides intimate, firsthand accounts of life in the concentration camps, the process of liberation, and the challenges of rebuilding a life after such trauma. More than just historical facts, she offers profound insights into human nature, the roots of prejudice, and how we can work to prevent such atrocities from happening again.
The Gradual Rise of Anti-Semitism
One of Fried's key messages is that the Holocaust didn't happen overnight. The persecution of Jews and other minorities in Europe was a gradual process that unfolded over many years. She emphasizes this point to highlight how crucial it is to recognize and resist injustice in its early stages.
Fried recalls her happy early childhood in the diverse town of Sighet, where people of different ethnicities and religions lived side by side. However, she began noticing subtle changes as anti-Semitism grew in the 1930s. At first, it was small incidents, like being excluded from certain activities at school because she was Jewish.
When Hungary annexed northern Transylvania in 1940, bringing with it Nazi racial laws, the situation worsened dramatically. Jewish professionals were barred from their jobs. Jewish-owned businesses were closed to non-Jews. Jewish children were expelled from schools. Each new restriction was met with disbelief, but Fried's family tried to adapt, hoping it was temporary.
The process continued relentlessly. Jews were forced to wear yellow stars, banned from public spaces, and eventually forced into ghettos. Even as they were pushed from their homes, many still believed things would improve. Fried poignantly describes saying goodbye to her beloved dog Bodri, thinking she would return soon.
Looking back, Fried realizes they should have resisted from the very first act of discrimination. Her warning to future generations is clear: never become complacent in the face of injustice, no matter how small it may seem at first. Prejudice and persecution, if left unchecked, can escalate to unimaginable horrors.
The Roots of European Anti-Semitism
To understand how the Holocaust was possible, Fried explores the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe. She identifies three key myths that fueled hatred against Jews for centuries:
The Christian myth of Jews as "Christ-killers": Early Christian prophets blamed Jews for the death of Jesus when they refused to convert. This led to centuries of persecution throughout Christendom.
The blood libel: Originating in medieval Eastern Europe, this myth accused Jews of murdering Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals. Though baseless, it spread widely and incited many violent attacks on Jewish communities.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: This forged document, first published in Russia in 1903, claimed that Jews were plotting world domination. Despite being proven fake, it was widely circulated and believed, even influencing Hitler's worldview.
Fried emphasizes that all these myths were completely false. Yet they became deeply ingrained in European culture over centuries, creating a climate of suspicion and hatred that made the Holocaust possible. By understanding these roots, we can better recognize and combat similar prejudices today.
Arrival at Auschwitz
Fried vividly describes the terrifying experience of arriving at Auschwitz in May 1944. After a long, cramped journey in cattle cars, she and her family were thrust into a nightmarish scene. Under the glare of searchlights, SS officers shouted orders as confused and frightened prisoners stumbled off the trains.
In the chaos, Fried was separated from her parents. Clinging tightly to her 14-year-old sister Livi, she joined a long queue of new arrivals. Here, they encountered the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death" for his cruel medical experiments on prisoners.
With a flick of his whip, Mengele decided who would be sent to forced labor and who would go directly to the gas chambers. Fried and her sister were selected for work, but their parents were sent to their deaths. The sisters never got to say a final goodbye.
Once inside the camp, the dehumanization process began immediately. Prisoners were stripped of their clothes and possessions, had their heads shaved, and were given ragged uniforms and wooden clogs. Fried describes the shock of this transformation and the realization that their very survival was now left to chance.
The constant presence of death and the arbitrary cruelty of the SS guards created an atmosphere of paralyzing terror. Prisoners quickly learned that falling ill or being unable to work meant certain death. The looming threat of selection for Dr. Mengele's experiments added another layer of fear.
Fried notes how this environment warped prisoners' sense of time and reality. Many lost track of how long they had been in the camp, feeling as if they had always lived in this nightmare world.
The Constant Struggle with Hunger
While terror was ever-present in the camps, Fried emphasizes that hunger was an equally powerful force shaping prisoners' daily existence. The Nazis provided only the bare minimum of food to keep prisoners alive for a few months of hard labor.
The daily ration consisted of:
- 300 grams of bread (mostly sawdust)
- 5 grams of margarine
- Occasionally a small piece of sausage or smear of jam
- Watery soup made from potato peelings
- A bitter liquid called "coffee"
This meager diet left prisoners in a constant state of gnawing hunger. Fried describes how thoughts of food consumed their minds, driving out almost all other concerns. The collective hunger became like a single entity uniting all the prisoners in their suffering.
To cope, prisoners resorted to desperate measures. Fried recalls chewing on saliva to trick her stomach into feeling full. Many risked severe punishment or even death by trying to scavenge bits of food while on work details outside the camp.
The extreme hunger sometimes turned prisoners against each other, with people stealing food from family members or fighting over scraps. These conflicts added to the psychological toll of camp life.
In a poignant detail, Fried shares how prisoners would gather at night to share recipes from home, vividly imagining elaborate meals as a form of mental escape. These moments of shared humanity provided a small respite from their grim reality.
The Unique Challenges Faced by Women
While all prisoners suffered tremendously, Fried highlights some of the specific hardships endured by women in the concentration camps. These aspects of the Holocaust experience are often overlooked in historical accounts.
One major issue was the lack of sanitary products for menstruating women. Stripped of all possessions, women had nothing to manage their periods. This led to humiliating situations where they were forced to walk around in blood-stained clothes, risking brutal beatings if guards noticed.
Interestingly, many women stopped menstruating altogether in the camps due to malnutrition and extreme stress. Fried also mentions a theory that the Nazis may have added hormones to the food to stop women's cycles.
Sexual exploitation was another horror faced by many female prisoners. The Nazis set up brothels in some camps, forcing Jewish women to serve as sex workers for SS guards. This was in direct contradiction to Nazi racial ideology forbidding "inter-racial" relationships. Women selected for this were worked during the day and abused at night, with no respite.
In some cases, high-ranking SS officers would take a liking to particular women, allowing them to escape hard labor by running the officer's household. However, the volatile nature of the Nazi regime meant these women often ended up murdered after a short time.
Fried and her sister managed to avoid much of this exploitation by sticking together and protecting each other. Their bond gave them the strength to endure when so many others perished.
Liberation and Its Aftermath
The long-awaited liberation, when it finally came, was a disorienting experience for many survivors. Fried describes how she and other prisoners at Bergen-Belsen were freed by British troops in April 1945. However, after years of starvation, abuse, and witnessing unimaginable horrors, many were too weak or traumatized to fully comprehend their freedom.
Fried herself fell ill with typhus shortly after liberation and spent two weeks unconscious. She credits her sister's constant care for her survival during this period. This highlights how, even after the camps were liberated, the fight for survival was not over for many.
The immediate post-war period was chaotic across Europe. Transport systems were in ruins, and millions of displaced people were trying to find their way home or to safety. Many Holocaust survivors, including some of Fried's relatives, attempted to return to their hometowns on foot or by whatever means they could find.
Fried shares the remarkable story of her uncle Sanyi, who walked from Auschwitz back to their hometown of Sighet in search of his wife. By an incredible stroke of luck, they ran into each other on the streets of Prague, both having had the same idea to return home.
However, for many survivors like Fried, there was no real "home" to return to. Their families had been murdered, their properties seized, and their communities destroyed. Fried and her sister ended up on a refugee boat to Sweden, where they would build new lives.
This period of displacement and uncertainty added another layer of trauma for Holocaust survivors. Many found themselves adrift in unfamiliar countries, struggling to process their experiences while also trying to build new lives from scratch.
Grappling with Identity
The Holocaust and its aftermath left many survivors, including Fried, grappling with complex questions of identity. Having been stripped of their humanity in the camps and then displaced from their homelands, many struggled to define who they were in the post-war world.
Fried reflects on how her sense of identity shifted over time. Growing up in Romania as a Hungarian-speaking Jew, she initially considered herself Romanian. After settling in Sweden, she began to identify as Swedish. Yet neither identity ever felt entirely secure.
She recalls how, even as a child, she first became aware of ethnic and national differences at school. Punishments for speaking Hungarian instead of Romanian made her realize that being different could be dangerous. This early experience foreshadowed the much more severe persecution to come.
In Sweden, Fried initially found acceptance as a Holocaust survivor. However, she soon encountered familiar prejudices, including anti-Semitism and neo-Nazi sentiments. Despite working hard and raising a family in Sweden, she had to wait seven years before she could apply for citizenship. Even then, she often felt that some Swedes didn't fully accept her as "one of them."
Fried's experience highlights the ongoing challenges many Holocaust survivors faced in their adopted countries. Beyond the trauma of their experiences, they had to navigate complex issues of belonging and identity in societies that were not always welcoming.
Ultimately, Fried concludes that her core identity is simply that of a survivor. This identity transcends national or cultural boundaries, defined by her experiences and her determination to bear witness to history.
The Complexity of Hatred and Forgiveness
One of the most difficult questions Fried grapples with is how to feel toward those who perpetrated such horrific crimes. She describes the intense hatred she initially felt for both her German captors and the Hungarian gendarmes who had turned her family over to the Nazis.
Fried shares a particularly painful memory of being brutally slapped by a camp guard when she dared to ask for new shoes. In that moment, she felt she could have killed him without remorse. Her hatred for the Hungarian gendarmes was even more intense, as she saw them as having betrayed their own countrymen.
However, over time, Fried came to understand that sustained hatred was ultimately self-destructive. She realized that her negative feelings were not affecting those who had wronged her, but were only causing her more pain. She also recognized that acting on vengeful feelings would only perpetuate a cycle of hatred.
Interestingly, Fried notes that many survivors seemed to intuitively understand this even in the immediate aftermath of liberation. She describes how, when British soldiers offered liberated prisoners the chance to take revenge on captured Nazi guards, most simply walked away, content to be free of their tormentors.
This doesn't mean that Fried advocates forgetting or excusing the crimes committed during the Holocaust. Rather, she emphasizes the importance of channeling those painful emotions into education and prevention of future atrocities.
Fried's perspective on hatred and forgiveness offers a powerful lesson in breaking cycles of violence and finding constructive ways to deal with trauma and injustice.
The Ongoing Relevance of "Never Again"
A central theme of Fried's message is the continued importance of the phrase "Never Again," which emerged after the Holocaust as a commitment to prevent such atrocities in the future. However, she warns that this slogan has lost much of its impact over time, especially as fewer Holocaust survivors remain to share their firsthand accounts.
Fried points out that genocide has, in fact, happened again since the Holocaust. She cites examples such as the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in the late 1990s. More recently, she sees echoes of past indifference in Europe's response to migrants drowning in the Mediterranean.
The rise of far-right nationalist movements in many countries is particularly alarming to Fried. She sees disturbing parallels between current anti-immigrant rhetoric and the scapegoating of minorities that preceded the Holocaust.
To make "Never Again" a meaningful commitment, Fried advocates for education that engages both the intellect and the emotions. She believes that simply learning historical facts is not enough; people must connect emotionally with the human stories of the Holocaust to truly internalize its lessons.
Sharing survivors' personal narratives, like her own, is crucial to this approach. By hearing about individual experiences of pain and loss, new generations can develop a deeper understanding of the human cost of hatred and intolerance.
Fried also emphasizes the importance of active resistance to injustice. She draws a parallel between schoolyard dynamics and broader society, noting that there are always bullies, victims, and bystanders. To prevent atrocities, we must overcome the bystander mentality and be willing to intervene when we see injustice occurring.
This call to action is at the heart of Fried's message. She urges readers to be vigilant, to speak out against intolerance, and to take concrete steps to build a more just and compassionate society.
Final Thoughts: The Urgency of Remembrance
As Fried concludes her reflections, she returns to the pressing need to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and its lessons for future generations. With each passing year, fewer survivors remain to give firsthand accounts of this dark chapter in human history.
Fried sees her role, and that of other survivors, as crucial in bridging the gap between past and present. By sharing their stories, they make the abstract horror of the Holocaust concrete and personal. This connection is vital in helping younger people understand the real-world consequences of unchecked hatred and prejudice.
She also stresses the importance of recognizing early warning signs of intolerance and authoritarianism. The Holocaust didn't begin with gas chambers; it started with small acts of discrimination that gradually escalated. By being alert to these early stages, we have a better chance of preventing history from repeating itself.
Fried's message is not one of despair, despite the heavy subject matter. She believes in the power of education, empathy, and active citizenship to create a better world. Her own life story - surviving unimaginable horrors and dedicating herself to educating others - is a testament to human resilience and the possibility of positive change.
As readers, we are left with a profound responsibility. Fried and other survivors have borne witness to one of humanity's darkest moments. It is now up to us to carry their stories forward, to remain vigilant against the forces of hatred and division, and to work tirelessly for a world where "Never Again" is not just a slogan, but a lived reality.
In sharing her experiences and insights, Hédi Fried provides us with more than just a historical account of the Holocaust. She offers a deeply human perspective on suffering, survival, and the ongoing struggle for a more just world. Her book serves as both a warning about the depths of human cruelty and a call to action for building a society based on mutual understanding and respect.
As we face contemporary challenges - rising nationalism, ongoing conflicts, and new forms of prejudice - Fried's words remind us of the stakes involved and the courage required to stand up for what is right. Her life's work ensures that even as the Holocaust recedes in time, its lessons remain vitally relevant to new generations.
Ultimately, "Questions I Am Asked About The Holocaust" is not just about the past. It's a book that compels us to examine our present and take responsibility for shaping a better future. Through Fried's powerful testimony, we are reminded of our shared humanity and our collective duty to protect it, no matter the cost.