10
Henry Friedman
Henry Friedman was born in
1928 to a Jewish family in
Brody, Poland. He recalls
the discrimination he faced
at the onset of the war when,
at ten years old, a classmate
told him to, “Wait until
Hitler comes, he’ll take care
of you!” In 1939 when the
Russians occupied Brody,
his family lost its business
and many of their private
possessions. After the Nazis
invaded Brody in 1941, they
swiftly deprived Jews of
their basic rights, forbidding
Jews to attend school or
teach and forcing them to
wear armbands bearing the
Star of David. The police
once caught Henry’s mother
without her armband and
beat her so badly she could
not raise her arms for a
month.
One day in February 1942, a young Ukrainian woman, Julia Symchuck, ran to the Friedmans' house and
warned Henry's father that the Gestapo was coming for him. Henry’s father was thus able to flee in time.
Jews not forewarned were sent to camps to be put to work or were murdered. These round-ups, called
“aktions,”
sent 4,500 Jews to the
death camp. The final order came in the fall of 1942, when the
remaining 6,500 Jews in the area were to move into a small ghetto in Brody. In October, 1942, the
Friedmans were ordered to move into the ghetto. As a result, they went into hiding in the village of
Suchowola where two different Ukrainian families helped them. Henry, his younger brother, mother, and
their female teacher went to a barn owned by Julia Symchuck's parents and moved into a tiny space about
the size of a queen-size bed. Henry’s father went to a separate hiding place half a mile from the
Symchucks’ barn. They learned that from May to June of 1943, the Nazis were liquefying the ghetto in
Brody. Most of the Jews in the ghetto were sent directly to Majdanek death camp.
For eighteen months, the Friedmans remained in hiding, freezing cold and slowly starving as food became
scarce. Finally, in March of 1944, the Russians liberated the village of Suchowola and the Friedmans.
Later, Julia Symchuck was recognized as one of the
nd
was reunited with Mr. Friedman in Seattle in 1989.
Brody, Poland - Where Henry Friedman was born and where he hid during the Holocaust
