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07.05.2020

The Auschwitz survivor Dorota Flug has died: She had trust and confidence that, based on the knowledge of their own responsibility, the people in Germany would develop a realistic and grateful awareness of their own liberation

 
 
Dorata Flug © Boris Buchholz

 

 

 

Auschwitz survivors around the globe are deeply saddened and are mourning the death of another companion, a witness of the times and a wise friend. Dorota Flug died on 1 May in Jerusalem aged 94, just a few days before the international day of remembrance for 8 May 1945. The people in Germany have much to thank her for during these days surrounding the United Nations’ Time of Remembrance and Reconciliation on 8 - 9 May.

Dorota Flug was born as Dorota Tugendreich in 1925 in the Polish city of Lodz, the daughter of a Jewish family. She survived the ghetto of Lodz, Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and other camps. She was 19 years old when she was liberated with her mother in Salzwedel on 14 April 1945 and then returned to Poland. She married her teenage friend Noah (Henryk) Flug, who she had met in the ghetto of Lodz. The two had been active together in an underground communist youth organization in the ghetto.

Noah Flug was also later imprisoned in Auschwitz and was liberated on 6 May 1945 by American troops in Ebensee concentration camp in Austria. The couple lived in Lodz and Warsaw until 1958, where they caught up on their school graduation and studied. Shaped by the stark images in her memory and the suffering of the children in Auschwitz, Dorota Flug qualified as a paediatrician. The growth of anti-Semitic sentiments in Poland promted them go to Israel in1958, where Noah Flug trained for the diplomatic service as an economics specialist. Despite her initial reservations due to her experiences with Germans, Dorota Flug accompanied her husband when he was posted to Germany in his position as an Israeli diplomat in the mid-1980s. But she insisted on remaining professionally independent, and during her husband’s diplomatic service she worked as a dedicated and well-recognized paediatrician in Swiss and German hospitals.

In her retirement Dorota Flug and her husband Noah, the long-standing president of the International Auschwitz Committee, worked tirelessly for the compensation and medical care of all the survivors of the German concentration and extermination camps. The determination, creativity and human kindness with which Dorota and Noah Flug represented the interests of the survivors throughout the world, telling of the sufferings and long-term pain of their former fellow prisoners, were legendary and evoked recognition, respect and affection not only from people in Germany. Dorota Flug pursued the repeated outbreaks of aggressive anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic hatred in many countries around the world with resoluteness and outrage.

Dorota and Noah’s two daughters, Anat and Karnit Flug, now live in Jerusalem: Anat works as a psychotherapist, Karnit was a governor of the Bank of Israel before her retirement. Two of Dorota and Noah Flug’s grandchildren live in Berlin.

In Berlin, Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, paid tribute to Dorota Flug as follows:

"Together with her husband Noah, the long-standing president of the International Auschwitz Committee, Dorota Flug cultivated friendly relationships with many people in Germany. Both hoped that remembrance of the crimes of National Socialism and the knowledge of their shared responsibility would be permanently embedded in the hearts and minds of German people. As committed and wise observers of the political conditions in Germany, Dorota and Noah Flug had trust and confidence that, rooted in this knowledge of their own responsibility, the people in Germany would also develop a realistic and grateful awareness of their own liberation. The life of Dorota Flug was shaped by persecution, courage, wisdom, knowledge of human nature, and human kindness: the people of Germany owe a great amount of gratitude to this wise ambassador of remembrance and her outstretched hand."