Margot Friedländer, a 102-year-old Holocaust survivor whose household was murdered at Auschwitz, would appear an unlikely — even radical — option to entrance a style shiny that usually options comely fashions and celebrities. However a weathered and white-haired Ms. Friedländer is the most recent cowl star of Vogue Germany, a distinction she appears to put on as calmly because the tailor-made coat she fashions on the journal’s July/August concern.
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 a whole bunch of colleges 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 characteristic Ms. Friedländer on its cowl and has but to characteristic a canopy star of her ilk, Ms. Wintour, in an electronic mail, referred to as the German Vogue cowl “sensible and provoking.”
“Margot Friedländer is an excellent topic, and a significant one,” Ms. Wintour mentioned, “given the political currents throughout Europe.”
Folks like Ms. Friedländer “are the final residing testomony to a darkish interval in historical past,” mentioned Masha Pearl, the manager director of the Blue Card, a company in New York that gives monetary and emotional help to Holocaust survivors throughout america. “To boost consciousness for remaining survivors, whose numbers are dwindling, is crucial,” she added.
At 102, Ms. Friedländer has a number of many years on the eldest American Vogue cowl stars, a bunch that features the style designer Miuccia Prada, who appeared on the journal’s March cowl at 74 this yr. However Ms. Friedländer isn’t the oldest individual 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 previous final yr.
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 dwelling 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 be taught, she instructed 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 yr, the couple emigrated to america, settling in Queens, New York.
It was solely after her husband’s loss of life, 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 Woman 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 instructed Vogue Germany, “within the title of the victims who can now not communicate for themselves.” Her message isn’t of forgiveness exactly, however of endurance and the loving embrace of humanity.
Ms. Friedländer instructed Vogue Germany that, because the begin of the Israel-Hamas conflict, 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 convey you collectively.”
She is grateful that she “made it” and particularly grateful, she instructed 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 be aware for Ms. Friedländer. In it she wrote: “Attempt to make your life.”
“I’m grateful,” Ms. Friedländer mentioned, “that, sure, I’ve.”