Who is Berthold Mendel Judenfreund? He was just a farm labourer, not a man of violence or a criminal, just a farm labourer.
On April 10, 1943, 25 years before I was born, the Nazis murdered him at Auschwitz.
What makes his story so sad is that he could have survived.
His nephew said the following about Berthold Mendel Judenfreund:
“My father emigrated from Nazi Germany to the United States in 1939, shortly after Kristallnacht. He grew up in a Jewish orphanage in Frankfurt with his younger brother, Berthold. My father, Georg, was five when taken to the orphanage. His brother was three. After completing Gymnasium in 1933, my father went to the only Jewish Teacher Seminary still operating in Nazi Germany. After spending a couple of years teaching in a Jewish Day School, my father came to the United States and enrolled as an undergraduate at Yeshiva University. His brother chose to remain behind in Germany, becoming a Youth Aliyah Hachsharah training-camp director in Nazi-occupied Holland. In 1943, the Gestapo closed the camp and deported Berthold to Auschwitz.”
He was 27 when he was murdered.
sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/117625/berthold-mendel-judenfreund
https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Berthold-Mendel-Judenfreund/27/76503
History of Sorts 