welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. never has it felt more important to remember the lessons of the greatest crime of the 20th century, the nazi genocide of thejews. europe is again witnessing a war of aggression, anti—semitism is on the rise and young people, according to the surveys, have an alarming level of ignorance about the holocaust. well, my guest today is tova friedman, one of the youngest survivors of the auschwitz death camp. now in her 80s, she's written a memoir and is using social media to tell her story. so is the world ready to listen and learn?

tovah friedman, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. it is a great pleasure to have you with me here in this synagogue. i am mindful that it is 77 years since you, as a six—year—old girl, were finally freed from auschwitz. why have you chosen to tell the world your story in the form of a memoir now? well, i've been speaking for a very long time, since i was about a5, 50 years old, i've been speaking about it. but i always wanted to write because writing is a different experience. and i can tell things that i cannot tell when i'm speaking for 45 minutes to a group. this is like — i can think about it and bring, bring out the essence of what really happened.

i sort of looked around and i saw the world is... it's really a mess, i hate to say that. anti—semitism and hatred, and left against right, and right — itjust... refugees are wandering the world trying to find a home, everywhere from country to country. and i said, "you know, this is a good time for..." ..in my age also, because i am at an age where i can't wait too much longer to tell my story. so everything together worked to make it the right time for me. there are so many powerful moments and vignettes in your story. one i'm very struck by is, is the tattoo, which every person, everyjew, every inmate of auschwitz was stamped with a number. right. by the nazis. you still have that stamp? absolutely. i don't know if it's possible... i never want to forget it. i want to show it to the world. can you show it to me?

yeah, of course. i see it. it didn't even fade. i see it. just the way it was. see, i mention it because you tell the story of how, after liberation, i believe it was by the time you got to the united states, there was a doctor who said, "you know what, i can fix that for you. i can erase it." right. and you refused, and you were actually angry. i was 12. and i remember saying to the... it was a doctor, a very kind person, who was going to give me a gift. he wasn't going to charge me. and he even said, you know, "you'll have such a tiny scar that by the time you grow up, there won't be even any." i said — you know what i said to him? i don't think... "if i had it right here, i wouldn't take it off. i did nothing wrong. and i want the world to know." from the very beginning, i had this thing, this inner feeling — the world has to know what happened. they have to know. you can't kill, destroy so many

souls, children and elderly... it would be silent. and then i didn't want to forget those people. i used to say to — in my head — "i'll remember you. i'll remember you." what is extraordinary is that you have pursued this remembrance, even though when you went through the experience of not just auschwitz, but life in the ghetto in poland, before auschwitz, you, you were a tiny child. i mean, the whole thing began for you in your first year of life. right. you had three and a half years in the most terrible conditions, in one of the worst smalljewish ghettos in poland. you were then transported, first with your parents, to a labour camp, and then to auschwitz itself. and as i said, you were in auschwitz at five and six years old. right.

it must be very hard, in a sense, to remember. a lot of things i don't remember. but the things i remember were so... ..imprinted on my mind, you could not help but remember it. you know, the body feels it. a child's body feels it. the hunger, the cold, the being alone without your family. the feeling that... .."i will never see them again." and then, oh, go and, go on with your life, whatever the life was there. what you also evoke, along with the hunger, the loneliness, and the fear, is the anguish of your parents. is the anguish of your parents, aand that to me is very moving. and that to me is very moving. again, going back to the ghetto, even before we get to auschwitz, you describe certain scenes that you remember with a child's memory, for example, of your mother faced with one of the nazi selections. right.

who, at the time, had two of your cousins, her nieces... right. ..clinging to her. her sister's two children. yeah. and they were clinging to her. yeah. hoping that she would take them through. exactly. and it is the sister who pushed them over to my mother, and it's the sister who pushed them over to my mother, because my father had working papers, so he was going to be saved. he was on a line with those that are going to not be killed. she was on the line to go to, to her death. your mother... so, she shoved them and they read... they got it. they were only three or four. they understood it. and they read it to my mother. yeah. and she had this decision to make, which she had trouble living for the rest of her life. because... for the rest of her life, because she, in that split second, decided that the safest thing to do for herself and her daughter, ie, you... exactly. ..was not to accept the presence of her two nieces. right.

not to save them, because she wanted to protect you and herself. exactly. and she had to live with it. and she had such a terrible time. she cried all the time and she said, "i killed my nieces. "i could have had them with me. "we could have had a family." because she lost all her brothers and sisters. not one came back. not one family member came back. we waited three years in poland. nobody, not even a distant cousin, nobody. and she said, "oh, those two kids, i could have had them." and i said, "mom, this was just a split second." there was... "how would you have saved them in auschwitz?" and the truth is that your mother did so much... right. ..to protect you as best she could through all of the horror of auschwitz. right. and one of the ways she did that was by, in essence, training you, training you not to look at those nazi officers in the eye. perfect.

not to ever make any gesture that would draw attention to yourself. i love that word "training". i didn't think of it, but it's an excellent word. i kept saying she protected me by telling me the truth, and she was training me so that when i am alone without her, i will know how to behave. do you know, i never, throughout the entire war, had eye contact with a nazi. that's how she trained me. i remember seeing them from here down. oh, and their hands. always looked down. and their hands, as they were holding the strap of the dogs. it's the dogs that i remember very well. i've not been able to touch a german shepherd. and even, even at the very end, there's another extraordinary twist, because the germans, as they were rushing to destroy what they could of the evidence, and get the last inmates out

of auschwitz, they were going to take everybody on this so—called death march. exactly. what she did was extraordinary and so clever because she decided to hide you... right. ..in the infirmary, which, of course, most of the nazi soldiers had already quit, they'd left, but some of the patients were still there. and actually, some of them were dead. and some of the nazis came back. just look at the madness. they came back. where do they come to? to the infirmary, to make sure that the dead are really dead. and if they saw a moving person that was incapacitated but alive, they would shoot that person in bed. she put you, in essence, in the bed, covered up. right. ..with a dead body. right. when she said to me, "don't breathe, so that the blanket will be visible." and she taught... she... i knew what she meant.

she only had a minute. yeah. the whole thing was just a minute. but i knew that i was supposed to breathe into the floor. yeah. and i turned my mouth into the floor, so that if i had to breathe, there'd be no, no, no sight. so, this is the training. this is the self—protection that she taught me throughout the whole year... we were together... ..all the time. how to save myself, in case i'm alone. you saw the gas chambers, didn't you? because you actually... of course. you were taken. again, in one of these things that is really... the only word one can use is miraculous. you were marched with a bunch of children... children, the whole barrack. ..to the gas chamber. you were going to be murdered. you were going to be gassed. without a question. and then, for some reason, which we will never quite... i don't know. yes. they decided that that day...

yes. ..they were not going to put the gas into the shower heads.. that day, for whatever reason. yeah. i don't know. i remember the whole incident very well. but — and i remember them telling us to go back, and i was under the impression that it was the wrong barrack. something went wrong, and that's what... i was under the impression. but maybe it's, maybe it's another reason. how do you make sense of the fact that you survived, when we know that something like one and a half million jewish children did not? there was no sense. there was no rea... to me, there was no reason. there was luck. really, luck. it feels for me so important to talk to you because you can bear witness to arguably the greatest human crimes

of the 20th century. you were a witness. you were a child. but you were a witness. you even... iam. i am a witness. you are a witness. i am a witness. you know there are some people in this world who still claim there were no gas chambers, there were no crematoria. i want to tell you something. mental institutions are full of people who think they are christ, they're god. i regard these people as if they are in a mental institution and they took on something. they can say anything they want. i don't talk to them. i don't respond. i ignore them. your mother when, injanuary �*45, auschwitz was liberated by russian soldiers... yes. your mother and you spent weeks still there, and then you were, in the spring, sent back to poland.

we went back, yeah. i think your mother said as you were leaving auschwitz, i think she said to you... ..as you were called then tola, not tova. tola, yes. i don't like that name. your name at that point was tola grossman. she said, "tola, remember. remember this place." she also took me around to show me things. she took me around and she showed me soap... ..made from human fat. and i remember she said to me, "shall we take it?" isaid, "no, i'm not even touching it." she wanted to remember. she wanted the world eventually... she never talked about it publicly, by the way. mm. and she only spoke to people who were there. earlier, when we were talking about your mother, you talked about the way in which some of her memories, particularly what happened with her nieces,

was something she could never get over and she died young and i think she died mentally very troubled, of course. very, very, very troubled. now, people talk about survivor's guilt after the holocaust, after places like auschwitz. is it a phrase that means anything to you? how would you describe...? i don't feel like that. i feel in a sense a survivor's obligation, the obligation to tell the story... ..and to lead a life that is meaningful because why am i saved if i'm wasting it? so, most of the people that i personally know — except my mother — the survivor's guilt was... ..to give something back to

society for having been saved. that's the people... my mother, though, was not interested in anything. and what about jewishness? after all of this experience, where you, yourfamily, your people were murdered en masse, for you personally, you know, that question so many jews who survived asked themselves, you know, "where was god in auschwitz?" did you have an answer for that and did yourjewishness become more important? i have no answer. i didn't know anything. i didn't know whatjewish was. i knewjewish meant death. it went together in my head. don't forget, i'm a little girl... sure. ..after liberation in dp camps. israel sent a lot of teachers to the dp camp, teaching the orphans, the children, to read, to read hebrew, and to

know about the country, about israel and so forth. and i remember saying to myself, "i'm going to study it. i've got to know what this was." if i lost everybody because of that, what is it? so i began to study thejewish religion, and i'm still doing it, all these years. you said earlier that one thing that makes you determined to use your voice and to describe your experience is the feeling that anti—semitism hasn't gone away. 0h! that many of the lessons... it's getting worse, and i don't know what lessons. i'm looking at humanity right now — have we learned anything? i don't know if what i'm saying will have an effect. i hope it will sometime, some place. one thing that germany as a country has tried to do... yeah.

..is to confront its own past. i wonder if their efforts and it's involved education,, it's involved different efforts to recompense those who suffered under the nazis — has that made any difference to you in terms of your willingness to accept germany's efforts to make amends? a very difficult question because i can't forgive. no money — no money — can pay for the death and the killing and the loss of family, the loss of a nation. but germany has been very good to israel, helping israel in many ways financially. really, in some way, israel is my salvation.

i am less scared and i can sleep better at night knowing that israel is there, because if something really happens to thejews around the world, they'll be there. but on a personal level, on a personal level, very hard for me. very, very hard. what about justice? you know, because not just in this genocide, but in more recent genocidal moments, for example, in rwanda and other places, there are now mechanisms in place to try and deliverjustice. now, after world war ii, after hitler's death and the demise of the nazis, there were the nuremberg nuremberg trials, senior nazis were executed. even today, so many years after, there are a small number of cases continuing against former nazis who are now more than 100 years old. does justice mean very much to somebody like you after...? no. absolutely not.

and many of the criminals got away to argentina and brazil and places like that. no. the reason i'm saying no is, look around the world now. are those people who are perpetrating all kinds of things in africa, are they afraid ofjustice? no. you are making your effort notjust with the book, but also, incredibly, you've become something of a sensation on social media, particularly tiktok. .. oh, that's my fabulous grandson. and you have more than 200,000 people who follow you. 50 million have seen it. they don't follow it, but they looked at it. i mean, if the world is to change, then surely the most important thing is to reach young people... absolutely. ..with education, with messages about what we can and should learn from the past.

do you think your story and the way you tell it, can and is reaching young people? i really hope so. i speak a lot to young people and especially now with tiktok and so forth. we get a lot of questions from people who've never heard... young people. 15—, i6—, 17—year—old people from albania, you know, australia, places like that. they are waking up and they're asking questions. we get sometimes as many as 200 questions a day. that means somebody is listening. the kids are listening. maybe their generation will be better than the one we have right now. very, very, very scary. scary, because your story and what we know of nazism tells us that evil can thrive

in human societies and, frankly, in the years since the nazis, we've seen evil in other forms, too. you're right. when you look back at your family's history and your own childhood, what do you think was the root of that evil that you confronted? it's... people have been trying to answer this question. i don't know. maybe... ...the german people thought that if they get rid of those jews who were in every walk of life, in arts and music and in politics, everything, that their own life would be better. i'm wondering whether it's in our nature to think that

if we get rid of our neighbour, we'll be happier. what did we do? what did my family do to be murdered? they were coming to a synagogue like this, this is an orthodox synagogue. they came to a synagogue like that. they prayed. they made shabbat. they ate kosher. iam kosher, too. and what is it exactly that we did to deserve to be annihilated? i have no answer. if you do, please... i don't, but i am fascinated to end our conversation with this question for you, as you sit here with me in this synagogue and as we reflect on everything that happened to you and your family, and the fact that, 77 years on, you are so full of life and passion and commitment and

a determination to do better. can you say that you feel optimistic about the human condition or not? depends on the day. some days i feel great, when i read such wonderful things during covid — what people did for each other, how they helped each other and so forth — and then i turned the channel and somebody�*s killed somebody else and so forth and so on. very... but i'll tell you what. without hope, it'd be hard to wake up in the morning. so, yes, i have hope. i do. i have hope. from the faces of the children, when i speak to them, yes, i do, because, otherwise, nothing would be worth anything. and life is worth it. and i love it. i can't think of a better way to end. tova friedman, it has been a pleasure to have you on hardtalk. thank you very much.

thank you. hello there. summer 2022 was certainly a memorable one, wasn't it? and as we bring summer to a close, these are some of the standout headlines — england'sjoint warmest summer on record, and the driest year so far for the uk since 1976. now, there is actually some rain in the forecast as we go through friday and towards the weekend. the weather is set to change. we've got this weather front here gathering pace into the northwest, and this weather front�*s been bringing some showers. now, those showers may well linger for parts of england and wales — fairly isolated, but nevertheless, they'll still be there. the best of the sunshine,

north wales, northern england and eastern scotland. showery outbreaks of rain gather into the far north west of scotland and northern ireland. here, temperatures perhaps at around 18 celsius the high — but it will be another hot and humid afternoon for central and eastern england, with temperatures into the high 20s. all change as we move into the weekend — for some, there will be some thundery showers around or longer spells of rain, and it will turn increasingly windy for all. as an area of low pressure anchors itself out to the west, spiralling around that low in an anti—clockwise direction is a series of weather fronts that'll bring some rain, some of it fairly persistent, through northern ireland and southwest scotland throughout the weekend — and that could have an impact. it will certainly have an impact on the feel of the weather. elsewhere, sunny spells and scattered showers. not a bad day to the far north of scotland, highs of 19 here — but in the sunshine, in east anglia, if you dodge those showers, you should see highs of 2a celsius. more wet weather in a similar

position coming up through southwest to england, wales, and then, sitting across northern ireland and southwest scotland. showers elsewhere — if you dodge those showers, you still keep those blustery winds, but it will still feel quite warm in the sunshine for parts of england and wales, as temperatures still likely to peak at highs of 25 celsius — disappointing under the cloud and the rain. the low pressure is not set to move very far very fast at all — into the early half of next week, it anchors itself down to the southwest. the wind direction still coming from the south, still relatively mild, but still, we could see some showers and those showers could be heavy and quite widespread for the early half of next week.

welcome to newsday, we are coming on air a little earlier than usual because we are awaiting a speech to the nation by presidentjoe biden. joe biden doesn't normally make many prime—time speeches to america, but he'll go in front of the cameras in philadelphia to unleash a wave of criticism on donald trump. the stage has already been set by his press secretary, who made it clear what mr biden�*s white house thought of the "maga republicans", named after donald trump's "make america great again" slogan.

these are the live pictures from philadelphia, this is independence mall, the birthplace of american democracy. for more on this, i'm joined now by our north america correspondent peter bowes in los angeles. this is quite a change of tact orjoe biden, he went into the white house talking about unity and getting the country back together after four years old donald trump, but now he is really taking on donald trump head on, why has he changed his tune? ~ ., , head on, why has he changed his tune? ~ . , , , tune? well, that is because we are a few _ tune? well, that is because we are a few weeks _ tune? well, that is because we are a few weeks away - tune? well, that is because we are a few weeks away from - tune? well, that is because we are a few weeks away from the j are a few weeks away from the mid—term elections. it's certainly true that, since taking office, joe biden has said that much to donald trump, certainly not got into any political spats with him, but now the stakes are high. the senate and house of representatives are up for the election, and the shape of congress for the next two years will dictate whatjoe biden can do as president for the next

two years. that is why these elections are very important for him. he will, it seems, attack donald trump and those on the right of the republican party. it's perhaps notified that he is in philadelphia, the birthplace of american democracy, where the us constitution, the declaration of independence, was signed. a favourite site or politicians if they want to make points in a speech about civil rights. that is what we expect from joe biden. he will talk about what he sees, if the republicans do well, those rights being whittled away and the country potentially going backwards under republicans. he will talk about being under threat, the right to choose, the right to privacy and contraception, and the right to marry the person you love. joe biden sees these issues as being in stock contrast to a lot of what former president trump believes in. ~ g ., �*

in. when joe biden entered the white house — in. when joe biden entered the white house in _ in. when joe biden entered the white house in 2021, _ in. when joe biden entered the white house in 2021, just - in. when joe biden entered the white house in 2021, just a - white house in 2021, just a couple of weeks after the january the sick insurrection, only about a third of americans recognise him as their president. how have these numbers changed? —— january the 6th place. numbers changed? -- january the 6th lace. , , , ., 6th place. these numbers have chanced 6th place. these numbers have changed very — 6th place. these numbers have changed very little. _ 6th place. these numbers have changed very little. swathes i 6th place. these numbers have changed very little. swathes of| changed very little. swathes of people still believe donald trump actually won the election. those numbers have remained quite consistent throughout the last couple of years. in throughout the last couple of ears. ,, ., , years. in the united states, we are facing _ years. in the united states, we are facing an — years. in the united states, we are facing an interesting - are facing an interesting mid—term coming up, pennsylvania is one of those swing states. in light of him being at independence mall, is this may be a political stunt for him in this state which, if the democrats don't win, really

could change the complex of congress?