Henry Friedman

We have to try to improve ourselves, to be more decent; to try to do the “good thing.”

—HENRY FRIEDMAN

Born: May 19, 1923

City of birth: Oradea Mare, Romania

_________ Happy Childhood in Oradea
In the Spring of 1923, Esther and Alexander Friedman welcomed their third child into the world, named Imre (later to be changed to Henry). The Friedmans were descended from a rabbinic dynasty that could trace its history back many generations in the city of Oradea, nestled between the hills of the Crisana plain.

The Oradea Jewish community had been one of the most prosperous Jewish communities in the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Jews held prominent public positions. The beautiful Neolog Temple on the riverbank towered over the city. Oradea had become a part of the Kingdom of Romania after World War I.

Alexander Friedman, Henry’s father, was an insurance broker, and they lived in a primarily Catholic neighborhood. Henry led a very happy childhood, playing with his Catholic neighbors and older siblings daily. Henry’s parents were not particularly religious, but they regularly attended services at the synagogue, and like all his peers, Henry became a Bar Mitzvah at the age of thirteen. He attended a Jewish school, belonged to Zionist youth groups, and enjoyed book binding and photography. Henry Friedman's parents on their wedding day. Oradea-Mare, Hungary Ca. 1918. Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum.

Background image: Oradea-Mare, Cafenea Royale, Romania, Ca. 1900. The Beginning of World War II
When World War II began in 1939, Romania officially adopted a neutral position for the country. In an attempt to avoid war, Romania agreed to relinquish territories it had gained after World War I, including Northern Transylvania where Oradea was located, to Hungary. Nevertheless, within a year fascist political forces in Romania grew strong enough to overthrow the king and Romania, like Hungary, joined the Axis powers.

Henry’s father had grown up a proud citizen of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was initially eager to see Oradea return to Hungary. But 1940 Hungary was not the nation of his childhood, and his excitement was soon lost. The Hungarian government quickly adopted the antisemitic ideologies of the Nazi party, and began passing “race laws” modeled after Germany’s Nuremberg laws. These laws denied Jews equal citizenship status, forbid intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, excluded Jews from various professions and schools of study, and restricted their economic opportunities.

Henry grew up wanting to be a textile engineer, working hard at school so he could go to a good university. But new laws restricted the number of Jewish students who could attend college. Denied an education, Henry began working as a manufacturing apprentice.
Miklos Horth and Adolf Hitler, 1938. Wikimedia.
Background image: Heinkel He 111 during the Battle of Britain Europe Ca. 1939-1942. Separation from Family
The Spring of 1944, when Henry was just twenty-one years old, his world changed. His father, older brother Steven, and the husband of his sister Clara were conscripted into forced labor for the Hungarian army. A month later, Henry received notice that he himself was also being drafted into the Hungarian army as a forced laborer.

As Henry prepared to leave, he kissed his mother and sister goodbye, not knowing that this would be the last time he ever saw them. His grandmother pulled him aside and led him to away to the other side of the duplex in which they were living. An old man, with a long, white beard and a tallis (prayer shawl) on his shoulders was waiting for him. He raised a second tallis over Henry’s head and placed his hands on Henry’s head. He said a blessing over him; a blessing that, as Henry put it, was: “a shield of protection, which is with me even today.”
 Esther, Clara and Alexander Friedman, Oradea-Mare, Hungary, Ca. 1940. Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum.
Background image: Man wearing a prayer shawl at a DP camp in Sankt Marien, Austria.United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Trude Friedler. Labor Camp When Henry arrived at the labor camp, he was given an axe and a shovel. Jews were not allowed uniforms or guns. Conditions in the camp were terrible, and the Jewish laborers were treated very badly. Although, the Hungarians did not build death camps, the unofficial policy towards the Jewish laborers created by high-ranking officers during the war was to “try and bring as few Jews back as possible…[to] just lose them in the war.”

Since Henry had a mechanical background, he was sent to a Manfred Weiss Steel and Metal Works, an SS-controlled military production factory outside of Budapest. On his first day, the air raid siren began blasting and everyone ran for cover. Henry and the other freshly arrived Jewish workers followed the crowd to the shelters, but they were told “there’s no room for Jews.” Henry and the other Jewish workers laid down near the fence of the complex, and watched approaching airplanes drop bombs. Such bombardments happened daily at the factory, and Jewish workers were never allowed in the shelters.
Hungarian Jewish labor battalion, Hungary, 1940-45. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Faye Kallus. Hungarian-Jewish conscripts in the Hungarian Labor Service, Hungary, March, 1942. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Adalbert Feher.
Background image: Manfred Weiss Steel Factory, Ca. 1901, Wikimedia. Postcard from Auschwitzen
In June 1944, Henry received a postcard from his sister, Clara. Before the war, Clara had been an enterprising, hard-working young woman who worked as a dermatologist. It read “Mother and I peeling potatoes, Clara” and the return address was Auschwitzen. In his naivety, Henry assumed she was referring to an area of Switzerland, as the Hungarian word for Switzerland was “Schweiss,” and excitedly wrote to Clara’s husband that she was alive and well.

Years later, Henry learned that as part of an effort to keep crowds from panicking before they were gassed and sent to the crematoriums of the death camp Auschwitz, Nazis would sometimes distribute postcards and pencils to their victims and let them write a quick note. The postcard was most likely written just minutes before Clara and Henry’s mother were murdered.
Henry Friedman speaking at the Breman Museum, 2018. Clara Friedman, Romania, Ca. 1940. Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Background image: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, May 1944, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Yad Vashem (Public Domain). Cruelty and Human Decency One Hungarian captain overseeing the factory took a particular delight in torturing Henry. As Henry was in line for soup, the captain called him out and said “Jew! The point of your star is partly loose,” referring to the identifying yellow cloth star Jews were made to wear. He marched Henry to his office and attacked and beat him savagely. The next morning, while Henry was pouring molten steel, the captain snuck up and hit him from behind with a pipe, and Henry was left badly burned by the flaming sparks. The captain continued doing this to Henry every day for weeks until Henry could no longer sit or lay down.

Finally, the factory manager, fearing Henry’s infected wounds were contagious, decided to send him to an army hospital in Budapest. He was given a number and told to wait, but before he could be seen the sirens sounded and the bombing began. The entire hospital was reduced to rubble, and Henry was evacuated to another hospital farther away from the city. Even though he was the only Jewish person in the hospital, miraculously he was still treated like a human being and given food, a bed, and fair treatment.
Doctors examine a starving patient in a hospital ward in the Warsaw ghetto, Warsaw, Poland, Ca.1942. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of See Published Source. Background image: Cieszanow Labor Camp, Poland, 1941-44, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Jerzy Tomaszewski. Henry’s “Guardian Angel”- Raoul Wallenberg After three months, Henry was forced to return to his unit. At the time of his return to Budapest, an “angel” also appeared in the city. The “angel” was Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who used his position in the Swedish embassy office to issue protective passports to over 20,000 Jews. These passports put the holders under the protection of the Swedish government. Henry was able to acquire such a passport from the Swedish consulate, ensuring he remained in the factory and was not deported, at least for a few months.

As the war began to draw to an end, the factory Henry was working in was destroyed by Allied bombing. The Germans overseeing the workers ignored the Swedish passports and put Henry and the other factory workers on a forced march in sub-zero temperatures. Henry’s shoes had fallen apart long before, and he marched in wet rags stuffed with paper for five days, watching countless others drop dead from exhaustion and starvation. On the fifth day a courier came, telling the troops to return the marchers to Pest, where they were placed in a ghetto near the Dohany synagogue, where food rations were provided by the Swedish embassy to those holding the Swedish passport. (Henry later learned that the courier had been bribed by Raoul Wallenberg to send the message).
Raoul Wallenberg. Wikimedia.
 Police attempt to control the crowd of Jews, who are waiting outside a branch of the Swiss legation located in the Glass House hoping to obtain Schutzbriefe that would protect them from deportation, Budapest, Hungary, 1944. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Agnes Lutz Hirschi.
Background image: Hungarian-Jewish conscript, Hungary, March, 1942, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Adalbert Feher. Capture by the German Army On a cold winter day, Henry and several others were on an excursion searching for food, when they were captured by a German patrol and taken to a German outpost on the steep mountains outside of Buda. Each day they were made to wake early and carry warm food up the mountain to the Germans hiding in foxholes. Every afternoon, they were made to carry the dead and wounded soldiers down the mountain. Temperatures frequently dropped to -40F (-40C), and Henry and the other slave laborers were given only stew made from a decaying dead horse. The slave laborers had only one set of clothes, which was not sufficient for the frigid temperatures, and most were infected with lice. Hungarian-Jewish conscripts in the Hungarian Labor Service prepare for their journey back to Ungvar, Hungary, March, 1942. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Adalbert Feher.
Background image: Jewish conscripts in Company 108/57 of the Hungarian Labor Service, Hungary, Ca. 1941, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Adalbert Feher. “The German Hospital” When he awoke the next day, he realized he could not stand. As the other prisoners left for work, a guard saw his bleeding leg and told him to get on a cart going to the “German hospital.” The cart, carrying Henry and two other prisoners, went straight to a cemetery. There, the prisoners were lined up before a firing squad. Henry stared into the barrel of a gun, facing death.

Henry lost consciousness for a few hours; he assumes he fainted just as the rifle fired. He was shot in the shoulder, but left for dead. He awoke the next morning crushed beneath the dead bodies of the other prisoners, whose warmth had kept him from freezing during the night.

Henry limped from the cemetery back to the civilian hospital. He snuck into the basement and hid in a coal storage room. During the day he remained in the dark, freezing room. At night, he crept outside to scrape snow to quench his thirst. He was starving and feverish from his injuries; he knew he had to find food. Nervous, he made his made way from the coal room and found a morgue, where someone had left a plate of frozen, moldy chicken. This sustained him for a few days.

From the basement, he could tell the war front was getting closer. Finally, he heard Russian being spoken above him and he knew the Soviet Army had arrived. He left his hiding place and surrendered to the Soviets, thinking “the war is over for me.
 Clip from Breman-produced documentary “They Shall Be Remembered- Henry Friedman”, 2012. Background image: German police execute Poles, Bochnia, Germany, December 16, 1939, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Jacob Igra.
 Gaining Freedom after "The Liberation" Despite his initial optimism, two weeks later Henry was hobbling along on homemade crutches on a group march led by the Russian guard. The group included German and Hungarian POWs, and though Henry had been a prisoner of the Germans he was now being treated as one himself. They were heading to the only remaining bridge crossing the Danube River.

As he marched, Henry had a moment of near hypnotization. A girl, watching from the sidewalk, caught his eye and, holding his gaze, told him in a whisper “Get lost. Get lost. This group is going to Siberia. Get lost.” Henry slowly slipped from the column until he was just surrounded by civilians waiting to take their goods across the river. He blended into the crowd and escaped across the bridge.

Henry decided to head towards to the railroad station, hoping to find his way home to Transylvania. When Henry was asking for directions, a good Samaritan invited Henry to his home, and gave him a warm meal and a place to sleep for the night. Before Henry left the next day, the man gave him an arm band with the colors of the Romanian flag. The band would result in better treatment from the Russians, as Romania, unlike Hungary, had been a Russian ally during the war.


Streets of Budapest, Hungary, 1945. Photograph by Lajos Kassak. Background image: Russian Soldier in Budapest, Hungary, 1945, Wikimedia. False Hope and Dark Discoveries Two days later, Henry arrived in Oradea. He walked up to his home and knocked on the door. A stranger opened it and barked: “Who are you?” Henry replied: “I live here.” The man said: “No. You don’t,” and slammed the door in Henry’s face. Too weak to fight, Henry made his way to a hospital, where he was cleaned up and given a bed.

After a few days, word came that Steven Friedman would be arriving soon at the hospital. Henry was ecstatic at the possibility of seeing his brother again. He arranged to have the bed next to his reserved. He waited eagerly, but in the afternoon someone told him the truth -- the man coming was not his brother, he just happened to have the same name. Henry’s brother had died in a labor camp.

Henry was heartbroken. Everyone and everything he had ever loved was gone. Over time, he discovered that his immediate family had all been deported to a concentration camp, under orders issued by Nazi officials and willfully carried out by local Hungarian police. His father and grandmother died in cattle cars. His mother and sister were murdered in Auschwitz immediately upon arrival.

Before the Holocaust, Hungary’s Jewish population had been estimated at 861,000 people. Estimates on the number of Jewish people who survived until the end range from 80,000 to 255,000. The community was decimated by the war, and no one escaped unaffected. Yet, as he waited to heal in his hometown, where his family had lived for generations, Henry was still surrounded by people who continued to insult Jews, steal their property, and spread lies about their fates. Henry decided the only way to truly heal and maintain his sanity was to leave Hungary and begin a new life.
Clip from Breman-produced documentary “They Shall Be Remembered- Henry Friedman”, 2012. Background image: Henry's parents and sister, Oradea-Mare, Hungary, Ca. 1940, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Beginning a New Life as an Artist in Italy
In 1945, Henry made his way from Romania, through Hungary and Austria, to northern Italy. He traveled by foot and by train, blending in with the many other thousands of people in post-war transit. He came to a displaced persons (DP) camp near Padua, Italy. DP camps were facilities administered by Allied authorities and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and were places for homeless refugees to stay temporarily while they were waiting to leave Europe.

Henry’s grandfather had been a popular fresco artist and had passed down his skills and talents to Henry’s father, who had, in turn, passed them on to Henry. While in the DP camp, Henry became involved with programs to rehabilitate refugees and promote Jewish culture. He painted sets for productions of great Jewish theater, such as plays by Shalom Aleichem, which told humorous stories of Jewish life before the war.

Henry knew he wanted to leave Europe, so he made his way to a big port city. He traveled to Rome, and then Naples and Milan. He made his living as a street artist, painting portraits in tourist areas.

In 1947, he saw an ostentatious movie marquee for Via Col Vento, (Gone with the Wind in English), and went in to watch. In the film, he saw the heroine, Scarlet O’Hara, watch as war burned her city to the ground, leaving her alone in the world. The movie stuck with him, as did the name of the city- Atlanta.
Portrait by Henry of Theodor Herzl. Trani, Italy, Ca. 1948, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum.
 Cards in a DP camp. Santa Marina de Leuca, Italy, 1950, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum.
 Henry in Vatican City, 1950, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum.
 Henry and cast of Shalom Aleichem production of short stories in a DP camp. Milan, Italy, 1948, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Background image: DP camp, Trani, Italy, 1945, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Coming to America
In 1950, the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta (JFGA) sponsored Henry to immigrate to the United States. When he arrived, he had just $1.40 to his name. A JFGA caseworker, who was trying to help him find a job placement, asked, “What were you doing in Italy the last five years?” Henry told her “I was painting.” The next day, she found him a job as a house painter, which he kept for a year and a half. Eventually, he transitioned to purchasing for the Atlanta Jewish Progressive Club. From there he found a position in a food distribution business, which was eventually sold to CFS Continental, and later Sysco Corporation.

The year Henry arrived, he went swimming at a public beach and saw a sign saying: “No dogs or Jews allowed.” In the 1950s and ‘60s he became increasingly involved in the Civil Rights movement, as he saw the degradation and humiliation shown to minorities in the United States, especially African-Americans, too reminiscent of the horrors he had known in Europe. From his experiences, he knew that no free society had any place for hate, prejudice, or bigotry.
Henry Friedman. 1950, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum.
 Henry at the Jewish Progressive Club. Atlanta, GA, 1955, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum.
 Henry Friedman's immigration processing paperwork. 1950, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. February 15th, 1950, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Meal Ticket from the USS Ballou, 1950. Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Baggage Tags from the Ballou, 1950, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum.

 Identity Document for Alien Refugee. 1950, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Identity Document for Alien Refugee. 1950, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Background image: USNS General A. W. Greely, Ca. 1950, Courtesy of the US Naval Historical Center. Falling in Love In 1956, Henry met a remarkable woman, Sherry Wolf, who was a dashing hazel-eyed model from Macon, GA. They met living in a boardinghouse in downtown Atlanta, and within a year they were married. Two years later, Sherry gave birth to a son, whom they named Stephen Alexander Friedman, after Henry’s brother and father.

Sherry was deeply involved in philanthropy, politics, and the civil rights movements. She was the first volunteer for the Martin Luther King Federal Holiday Celebration, president of Hadassah, a member of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust, and a campaign director for Democratic candidates serving at the local, state, and federal levels. For her outstanding contributions, she was honored with the Thomas B. Murphy Lifetime Achievement Award from the Democratic Party of Georgia and was on the steering committee of the 30th Anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech and the March on Washington, where both she and Henry were honored. Sherry Friedman passed away on February 4, 2016, after being happily married to Henry for 61 years.
Henry with wife Sherry and son Stephen. Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Background image: Sherry Friedman, Atlanta, Ca. 1950, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Retirement When Henry was 70, he decided it was time to retire. He remembers this time fondly, for “they must have been happy with what [I] was doing for Sysco, because it was almost a whole month of celebrations.” But after the parties were through, he quickly became bored at home and decided that retirement wasn’t right for him just yet. He became the office manager for his son’s law firm, a position which he kept until his health finally forced him into true retirement."
Background image: Henry with family, Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Finding a Mission in a Time Capsule
For most of his life, Henry never spoke of his WWII experiences. But about 20 years ago, he came across an article about the Oneg Shabbat Archives, collections of personal records hidden by Jews during the height of the Nazi power.

Henry spoke of their effect on him:

“So, all those people in Warsaw—they were sure that the Germans will be victorious, and no one would ever know that people lived and died under what circumstances. They were afraid that everything will be forgotten; everything will be swept under the carpet.

When I read that article in that magazine, that changed all my life. Maybe that was the purpose that I did not perish with my family; I didn't perish with the millions of people. That I had a mission, I had a duty, and I have an obligation, an obligation to speak about it because those six million cannot be here to talk about it.

So even if the subject is a painful subject for me, like pulling a scab from an unhealed wound, I have to talk about it because after my generation is gone, it won't be any first-generation survivors, and will go down in history, and little by little it will be forgotten, forgotten just like nothing happened. And for that reason I feel like I have to do it even if it's not a pleasant subject… Nothing matters but only for me to speak about what happened to those six million Jews.”

Since then, Henry has spoken to thousands of people, even being honored for his efforts by the Atlanta City Council who declared March 16, 2015 “Henry Friedman Day.”
 Metal boxes and milk cans used by Oneg Shabbat team (led by Emanuel Ringelblum) to hide first and second part of Warsaw Ghetto archive, Warsaw, Poland, Ca. 1950. Holocaust Memorial next to the Danube River, Budapest, Hungary, January 1, 2012, Wikimedia . Background image: Holocaust Memorial next to the Danube River, Budapest, Hungary, January 1, 2012, Wikimedia . What Can I do to Improve This World? Astoundingly, Henry has always retained an extraordinary sense of optimism and a kind heart. He has always described himself as a “glass half-full kinda guy.” He is quick to laughter and has a smile that lights up the room. Henry says of his life: “For me, I could crawl in a corner and feel sorry for myself, which will never help me. So, when I left Europe, when I came to United States, I want to start a new life, and that is what I did. So, yesterday’s gone. I cannot bring my family back. I cannot just deal with the situation of what happened. I have to start a new life, to put the whole thing behind me.

When Henry was asked what he would have listeners take away from his story, he responded:

“I learned a lot from my wife. She was a very wonderful person, and she was always telling everybody: “There is only one race: The Human Race.” That is what I believe. We are all one race. No individual is better than another one. We have to try to improve ourselves; to be more decent to each of us, to try to do ‘the good thing.’ To try and come up with “what good thing can I do with my time today? What can I do to improve this world?””
 Resolution H.R. No.1235 from the Georgia House of Representatives honoring Henry Friedman, March 12, 1996. Courtesy of the Cuba Family Archives for Southern Jewish History at the Breman Museum. Henry Friedman speaking at a Breman-sponsored event, Atlanta, GA, 2017. Courtesy of the Breman Museum. Background image: Henry Friedman speaking at a Breman-sponsored event, Atlanta, GA, 2018, Courtesy of the Breman Museum. Name in US: Henry Friedman


Name at Birth: Imre Friedman


Hebrew Name: Leb ben Shaya


Married Name: Henry Friedman


Parents’ Names: Esther and Alexander Friedman


Sibling(s) Name (s): Clara and Steven Friedman


Spouse(s) Name(s): Sherry (Wolf) Friedman


Children’s Name: Steven Friedman


Date of Birth: May 19, 1923


City of Birth: Oradea Mare, Romania


City of Birth, Alternate Names: Nagyvarad, Hungary


Country of Birth: Romania


Religous Identity (Pre-war): Jewish


Religous Identity (Post-war): Jewish


Ghetto(s), Name/ Year(s): Budapest/ 1944


Camp(s), Name/ Year(S): Manfred Weiss Steel and Metal Works/1944


Liberated By/ Date: Red Army/ February 13, 1945


Location of Liberation: Budapest


DP Camp(s)/ Year(s): Trani, Italy/ 1946-1948,


Santa Marina de Leuca, Italy/ 1946


Year/ City/Ship to U.S.: 1950/ Naples to Atlanta/ USS General C.C. Ballou


Georgia City of Residence: Atlanta, GA


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