Ich bin! Margot Friedländer (2023)

Born in Berlin in 1921, Margot Bendheim works as an apprentice in a tailor’s shop after finishing school, performs with the Jewish Cultural Association theater group, and sews costumes for the stage. Her family’s efforts to escape persecution under the Nazi regime by emigrating abroad fail. After her parents separate in 1937, Margot lives with her mother and younger brother, Ralph. From 1941 onward, Margot is forced to do labor and has to give up the work she loves at the Jewish Cultural Association. In January 1943, Margot’s mother plans to flee with her children to relatives in Upper Silesia. But shortly before they can leave, Ralph is arrested by the Gestapo. His mother decides to follow her son voluntarily—to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Margot is left alone. Along with an amber necklace, an address book, and a handbag, her mother leaves her an important message: “Try to make a life for yourself …” The 21-year-old Margot Bendheim goes into hiding, disguises herself, dyes her hair, and even has her nose operated on to avoid being recognized. She has to keep changing her lodgings and depends on the goodwill and mercy of those who help her. Some take advantage of her desperate situation and demand “favors” in return, including sexual ones. Margot has little chance of resisting. The air raids that become increasingly frequent in Berlin from 1943 onward are even more dangerous for Margot and other so-called “submarines” than for the rest of Berlin’s population. They cannot go to air-raid shelters or cellars and can only hope not to be buried under rubble or become victims of the flames. In the spring of 1944, Margot is arrested by so-called Jewish “catchers.” The Gestapo forced Jews to work for them as trackers, to hunt down Jewish people in hiding. Despite their collaboration, in most cases the “catchers” could not prevent their own relatives from being deported and murdered. After her arrest, Margot Bendheim is deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. When, shortly before the end of the war, the Nazis evacuate Auschwitz and the death trains also reach Theresienstadt, she realizes that she will never see her mother and brother Ralph again. Like more than a million other victims of the unjust regime, both were murdered in the death camp. Margot survives. After liberation, she marries Adolf Friedländer, an acquaintance from her days in Berlin’s theater scene whom she had met again in Theresienstadt. The couple emigrates to the United States and builds a new life there. Only after her husband’s death does Margot visit her old home city in 2003, at the invitation of the Berlin Senate. Since 2010, she has lived in Berlin again and regularly visits schools to tell young people about her life.