Holocaust Survivor Finally Returns to Germany

The Nazis found Margot Friedlander hiding in Germany in 1944 and shipped her off to a concentration camp. She not only survived, she met her future husband at the camp, and they immigrated to New York City after the war. Now, as NBC News reports, Friedlander has done something she once promised never to do—she's returned home to Berlin to live out her days. Her change of heart started when her husband died in 1997 and she began writing a memoir, eventually titled Try to Make a Life—her mother's last message to her. "Everything started coming back to me, many things that I pushed aside for years."

A filmmaker got wind of it and made a documentary (Don't Call It Nostalgia) that required Friedlander to return to Germany for a short visit. Now she's back for good, choosing to remember the Germans who risked their lives to help her hide rather than the Nazis who hunted her. She's also making a point to share her story with young Germans. There's a limit to her native loyalty, though: When she dies, she plans to be buried next to her husband in America, notes the NBC report. (More Margot Friedlander stories.)