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When he asked her to marry him, she said yes. It was the waning days of the war, and their guards had begun to flee as the Russian Army approached.<\/p>\n
They were married by a rabbi in June 1945, with a prayer mantle held over their heads as a huppah. They found an old porcelain cup to smash, as tradition required. Ms. Friedl\u00e4nder saved a piece.<\/p>\n
A year later, they sailed into New York Harbor. When the Statue of Liberty emerged from the fog, Ms. Friedl\u00e4nder was ambivalent. Here was the vaunted symbol of liberty, but, as she wrote in her memoir, America had not welcomed her family when they needed it most. She was stateless, and she would feel that way for the next six decades.<\/p>\n
Anni Margot Bendheim was born on Nov. 5, 1921, in Berlin. Her mother, Auguste (Gross) Bendheim, came from a prosperous family but was independent-minded and had started her own button-making business that she turned over, reluctantly, to Margot\u2019s father, Arthur Bendheim, when they married. The marriage was unhappy, and the couple divorced when Margot was a teenager.<\/p>\n
Margot loved fashion, and she went to trade school to study drawing for fashion and advertising. Early in 1937, she began apprenticing at a dress salon. The Nuremberg Laws had been in effect for two years, stripping Jews of their rights and businesses. Margot\u2019s mother was desperate to emigrate, but her father, who had two disabled siblings, refused. Not only were there quotas restricting the number of Jewish \u00e9migr\u00e9s to America and other host countries, but disability and illness were disqualifiers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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After the divorce, Auguste worked desperately to find a way out. Many hoped-for leads evaporated, like the papers promised by a man who took their money and vanished.<\/p>\n
Margot and Ralph were conscripted to work in a factory that made armaments for the German military. During this period, their father emigrated to Belgium, heedless of the circumstances of his former wife and children. He would later die at Auschwitz.<\/p>\n
It took years for Ms. Friedl\u00e4nder to learn her mother and brother\u2019s fate. Their deaths were confirmed in 1959, but it would be another four decades before she learned the details, from the deportation lists at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City, an archive of German Jewish history. They had also been sent to Auschwitz. Her mother had been sent to the gas chamber upon arrival; her brother, a month later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n