September 7, 1938 | Tova Friedman, a Polish Jew, was born in Gdynia.

In July 1944, she was deported to Auschwitz. Her extended family was murdered in the war.

Tova was born in Gdynia, Poland, a city adjacent to Danzig. Her family came from Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland, and returned there when the war broke out. Her father was shocked at the devastation of his town. 15,000 Jews were cramped into six four-story buildings, unable to leave without special permission.

Tova and her family lived with her grandparents and other families in tight quarters, with the children sleeping and eating under the table. Starvation, shootings, and deportation soon diminished the population. Those that managed to survive were packed into trains and shipped off to Nazi labor camps. A handful of Jews were kept as the “cleanup squad.” Tova held her mother’s hand as her parents picked up corpses and brought them to the communal grave.

Their next destination was Starachowice work camp, where her parents worked at an ammunition factory while the children roamed the streets of the surrounding four towns, careful not to get shot by armed soldiers. When it was time for the children’s selection in the camp, Tova managed to go unnoticed. Soon after, she and her family were sent to Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Tova was five and a half years old. Her head was shaved and she was tattooed. She survived hunger, disease, and a trip to the gas chamber. Her mother’s ingenuity saved both their lives when they hid amongst corpses instead of leaving on a Death March, and they survived to experience the liberation of Auschwitz by Russian forces in January 1945.

Tova believes that it was her mother’s brutal honesty that helped her survive. Though just a child, she understood her circumstances and the cruel reality that stood before her.

Tova and her parents emigrated to the US when she was 12 years old. Tova later received her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Brooklyn College, a Master of Arts in Black literature from City College of New York, and her Master of Arts in social work from Rutgers University. She taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was Director of Jewish Family Service of Somerset and Warren Counties for over twenty years. Tova continues to work there as a therapist today, in addition to sharing her story with students and communities at public and private schools, colleges, places of worship, and even prisons.

Tova is the proud mother of four and grandmother of eight. She currently lives in New Jersey.
In 2020, Tova joined our Foundation’s delegation to Auschwitz-Birkenau to mark the 75th anniversary of the camp’s liberation. In 2025, she returned once again as a member of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation’s Survivors’ Delegation, and she was one of the keynote speakers at the official 80th anniversary commemorative event at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

Tova is also one of the remarkable contributors to our Foundation’s cookbook, Honey Cake & Latkes: Recipes from the Old World by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Survivors.

In recent years, Tova has become a beloved social media presence, using TikTok with her grandson Aron to teach millions of young people about the Holocaust and the dangers of antisemitism.