Margot Friedländer, 102-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor, Gets a Vogue Cover

Margot Friedländer, a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor whose household was murdered at Auschwitz, would appear an unlikely — even radical — option to entrance a vogue shiny that typically options comely fashions and celebrities. However a weathered and white-haired Ms. Friedländer is the newest cowl star of Vogue Germany, a distinction she appears to put on as evenly because the tailor-made coat she fashions on the journal’s July/August subject.

One of many world’s oldest and maybe best-known Holocaust survivors, Ms. Friedländer isn’t any stranger to fame. She has met with world leaders like Angela Merkel, the previous chancellor of Germany, and has rubbed shoulders with A-listers like Helen Mirren.

Ms. Friedländer (nee Bendheim), who lives in Berlin, is a vociferous champion of Holocaust remembrance. She has made it her mission to tour tons of of faculties all through Germany, urging her younger audiences to neither neglect previous traumas nor cling to the grievances that proceed to polarize folks.

Within the Vogue Germany interview, as in these talks, she expresses concern on the rise of right-wing populism and antisemitism in Germany and all through the world.

Her multilayered message resonates with Anna Wintour, the editor in chief and international editorial director of Vogue and chief content material officer at Condé Nast. Whereas Vogue’s American version didn’t function Ms. Friedländer on its cowl and has but to function a canopy star of her ilk, Ms. Wintour, in an e-mail, known as the German Vogue cowl “good and galvanizing.”

“Margot Friedländer is a superb topic, and a significant one,” Ms. Wintour stated, “given the political currents throughout Europe.”

Folks like Ms. Friedländer “are the final dwelling testomony to a darkish interval in historical past,” stated Masha Pearl, the manager director of the Blue Card, a corporation in New York that gives monetary and emotional help to Holocaust survivors throughout america. “To lift consciousness for remaining survivors, whose numbers are dwindling, is crucial,” she added.

At 102, Ms. Friedländer has a number of a long time on the eldest American Vogue cowl stars, a bunch that features the style designer Miuccia Prada, who appeared on the magazine’s March cover at 74 this 12 months. However Ms. Friedländer will not be the oldest particular person to seem on a canopy of Vogue: Apo Whang-od, a tattoo artist, appeared on the April cowl of its Philippine version at 106-years-old final 12 months.

Ms. Friedländer was 12 when Hitler got here to energy, and in her early 20s when the Gestapo arrived in 1943 to spherical up her household, herding her mom onto one of many Nazis’ notorious transports to Auschwitz.

Ms. Friedländer wasn’t residence when her household was detained. Quickly after, she dyed her hair, began carrying a cross and was hidden for 13 months by anti-Nazi sympathizers whose names she was by no means permitted to study, she informed The Ahead in a 2013 article.

In 1944, she was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the Theresienstadt focus camp, in what’s now the Czech Republic. There, she witnessed, and suffered, Nazi atrocities. She additionally met Adolf Friedländer and, after liberation in 1945, married him in a standard Jewish ceremony. The next 12 months, the couple emigrated to america, settling in Queens, New York.

It was solely after her husband’s demise, in 1997, that Ms. Friedländer considered mining her life expertise for a memoir. Whereas she was writing it, she was approached by a documentary filmmaker, who persuaded her to inform her story on digital camera — and to return to Berlin within the early 2000s to movie the mission.

The documentary, “Don’t Name It Heimweh,” got here out in 2004, and her e-book, “‘Attempt to Make Your Life’: a Jewish Lady Hiding in Nazi Berlin,” in 2008. Two years later, Ms. Friedländer, then in her late 80s, moved again to Berlin.

She has since addressed 1000’s of individuals, talking, as she informed Vogue Germany, “within the title of the victims who can not converse for themselves.” Her message will not be of forgiveness exactly, however of endurance and the loving embrace of humanity.

Ms. Friedländer informed Vogue Germany that, for the reason that begin of the Israel-Hamas war, she has been requested by many younger folks whether or not she helps Israel or Palestine. Her reply is to not take sides. “Don’t take a look at the issues that separate you,” she tells them. “Consider the issues that bind you, that carry you collectively.”

She is grateful that she “made it” and particularly grateful, she informed Vogue Germany, that she took to coronary heart the recommendation of her mom, who, as she was being deported by the Nazis, hurriedly left a word for Ms. Friedländer. In it she wrote: “Attempt to make your life.”

“I’m grateful,” Ms. Friedländer stated, “that, sure, I’ve.”