Public lifeטובה פרידמן

Tova Friedman

Tova Friedman is a Polish-born Jewish American therapist, social worker and author who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp as a child.

born 1938Surviving Auschwitz as a childThe memoir The Daughter of AuschwitzHolocaust testimony on TikTokWork as a therapist

Born: 7 September 1938, Gdynia
Occupation: psychotherapist
Education: Brooklyn College, City College of New York, Rutgers University

Tova Friedman was born in 1938 in Gdynia

Tova Friedman was born Tola Grossman on September 7, 1938, in Gdynia, Poland. When World War II began, her family returned to Tomaszow Mazowiecki, where Jews were forced into a ghetto. The family was later moved to Starachowice, and her parents worked in an ammunition factory.

Her father was deported to Dachau, and she and her mother were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 1944. She was held in the children's camp and survived a trip to the gas chamber on October 7. In January 1945 she and her mother hid among bodies in the infirmary and were freed by the Red Army on January 27, 1945.

After the war the family stayed in Poland for several years and moved to the US in 1950. She earned a BA in psychology from Brooklyn College, an MA from the City College of New York and an MA in social work from Rutgers University. She married Maier Friedman and had 4 children.

She taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and directed the Jewish Family Service of Somerset and Warren Counties, working there as a therapist for more than 20 years. Her story appeared in the 1998 book Kinderlager, and in 2022 she published a memoir written with journalist Malcolm Brabant. She shares her story on TikTok and spoke at Auschwitz on January 27, 2025.