Armin Frieder

Abraham Armin Frieder (30 June 1911 – 21 June 1946) was a Slovak Neolog rabbi. During World War II, he participated in resistance against the Holocaust as a member of the Bratislava Working Group. After the war, he was appointed chief rabbi of Slovakia.

Life

Frieder was born in Prievidza, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, one of three children of Filip Frieder and Ružena Messinger; he had a brother, Emanuel, and a sister, Gittel. After eight years of study at yeshivas in Topoľčany and Bratislava, he was ordained in 1932. He was a rabbi in Zvolen between 1933 and 1937, then moving to Nové Mesto nad Váhom; before the war, he was the vice-chairman of the Central Zionist Organization. He and his wife, Ružena (née Berl), had a son, Gideon, born in 1937 and a daughter, born in 1940.[1][2][3] After the Slovak State, declared in 1939, began to persecute Jews, Frieder responded by organizing soup kitchens and giving inspiring sermons.[4]

Frieder was employed by the Ústredňa Židov (a Judenrat) and joined the opposition momevement within it, the Working Group. By this time, he was the leading Neolog rabbi in Slovakia.[5][6] On 8 March 1942, he personally delivered a petition from Slovakia's leading rabbis to President Jozef Tiso, protesting the imminent deportation of most of Slovakia's Jewish citizens. Although the Working Group was not aware of the Nazi plan to murder all Jews, they knew enough about the massacres and widespread starvation for Jews in Poland that they decried the deportation as tantamount to "the physical destruction of the Jews in Slovakia". Tiso ignored the petition; Frieder later wrote that "One would think that words that come from the heart could penetrate the heart. But it was not the case."[7] Despite the prohibition on Jews issuing official documents, Frieder's petiton was widely duplicated and circulated among Slovak government officials, legislators, bishops, and other Catholic religious leaders. However, the Slovak government supported the deportation of Jews, so the protests were ineffective.[8][9] During the first transports, only single men and women were deported; Frieder issued fradulent marriage licenses to his congregants.[10] Between 26 March and 20 October 1942, about 57,000 Jews, two-thirds of the Jews in Slovakia at the time, were deported. Only a few hundred survived the war.[11][12]

Frieder was a key figure in the Working Group's illegal relief scheme, sending valuables and money to deported Slovak Jews via smugglers, which they could trade for food or other necessities. Because of his activity, he was arrested on 22 September 1942, but continued these efforts on his release.[13] A letter sent to Switzerland jointly by Frieder and his Working Group colleaugue Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl on 1 December 1942, mentioning mass executions at Bełżec extermination camp was the first indication that the Working Group knew about the organized extermination of Jewish deportees.[14] In 1943, Frieder collected testimony from an escapee from Treblinka extermination camp, which was also sent to the Working Group's contacts in Switzerland.[15] Soon after the German invasion of Slovakia concurrent with the Slovak National Uprising in August 1944, Frieder was imprisoned in Bratislava. Released by the end of the month, he was arrested in the 28 September roundup in Bratislava.[16] Meanwhile, his family had fled to Banská Bystrica, the center of the uprising. Frieder's wife and daughter were killed in a German attack on the nearby village of Staré Hory, and his son was wounded. Frieder managed to avoid deportation from Sereď and survived the war.[2][17][18]

After the war, Frieder returned to Bratislava shortly after the city's liberation. He took immediate action to restore Jewish community life, establishing a Yeshurun, and also practical measures to help survivors. In September, he became the chairman of the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Slovakia (ÚSŽNO). Subsequently, he was named the Chief Rabbi of Slovakia; this angered the Orthodox faction in the country, which represented 70% of surviving Jews. Frieder found it difficult to bridge the gap between the communities, but eventually succeeded by giving the Orthodox faction control over kashrut, marriage, and halakha.[19] He organized a conference in Bratislava for Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, speaking about the activities of the Working Group.[20] In early 1946, he fell ill in London while traveling to raise money for relief. Upon his return to Slovakia, he was operated on by the Slovak physician and rescuer of Jews, Karel František Koch. Two days later, on 21 June 1946, he died shortly before his thirty-fifth birthday, which "came as a shock to the community", according to his brother Emanuel. Armin had been slated to testify as the main witness for the prosecution at the trial of Anton Vašek, a corrupt official who organized the deportation of Jews.[17][1][21] Emanuel succeeded him as chairman of the ÚSŽNO, and published his brother's diaries (originally 800 pages written in Slovak and German) as To Deliver Their Souls.[22] Frieder had been known for his embrace of Zionism, after his death, his son emigrated to Palestine.[2][17]

References

Citations
  1. 1 2 Gály 2006, p. 242.
  2. 1 2 3 "Rabbi Armin Frieder papers". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 7 October 2018.
  3. ↑ Frieder & Frieder 1990, pp. 4- 21.
  4. ↑ Garbarini 2011, pp. 89-90.
  5. ↑ Bauer 2002, p. 178.
  6. ↑ Bauer 1994, p. 74.
  7. ↑ Ward 2013, p. 231.
  8. ↑ Fatran 1994, p. 167.
  9. ↑ Kamenec 2002, p. 117.
  10. ↑ Fatran 2002, p. 152.
  11. ↑ Bauer 1994, p. 69.
  12. ↑ Kamenec 2002, p. 130.
  13. ↑ Fatran 1994, pp. 178–179.
  14. ↑ Fatran 1994, p. 182.
  15. ↑ Fatran 1994, p. 184.
  16. ↑ Fatran 1994, p. 192.
  17. 1 2 3 Fatran 1994, pp. 200-201.
  18. ↑ Frieder & Frieder 1990, pp. 198-214.
  19. ↑ Cichopek 2014, pp. 55, 226-227.
  20. ↑ Cohen 1991, p. 454.
  21. ↑ Frieder & Frieder 1990, p. 249.
  22. ↑ Cichopek 2014, pp. 226-227.
Bibliography

  • Bauer, Yehuda (1994). Jews for Sale?: Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933–1945. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300059137.
  • Bauer, Yehuda (2002). Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300093001.
  • Cichopek, Anna (2014). Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107036666.
  • Cohen, Susan Sarah (1991). Antisemitism: An Annotated Bibliography. Garland. ISBN 9783598237058.
  • Fatran, Gila (1994). Translated by Greenwood, Naftali. "The "Working Group"". Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 8 (2): 164–201. doi:10.1093/hgs/8.2.164. ISSN 8756-6583.
  • Fatran, Gila (2002) [1992]. "The Struggle for Jewish Survival during the Holocaust". In Długoborski, Wacław; Tóth, Dezider; Teresa, Świebocka; Mensfelt, Jarek. The Tragedy of the Jews of Slovakia 1938-1945: Slovakia and the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Translated by Mensfeld, Jarek. Oświęcim and Banská Bystrica: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Museum of the Slovak National Uprising. pp. 141–162. ISBN 83-88526-15-4.
  • Frieder, Emanuel; Frieder, Armin (1990). To deliver their souls: the struggle of a young rabbi during the Holocaust. Holocaust Library. ISBN 9780896041448.
  • Gály, Tamara Archleb (2006). The Encyclopaedia of Slovakia and the Slovaks: A Concise Encyclopaedia. Encyclopaedic Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. ISBN 9788022409254.
  • Garbarini, Alexandra (2011). Jewish Responses to Persecution: 1938–1940. AltaMira Press. ISBN 9780759120419.
  • Kamenec, Ivan (2002) [1992]. "The Deportation of Jewish Citizens from Slovakia in 1942". In Długoborski, Wacław; Tóth, Dezider; Teresa, Świebocka; Mensfelt, Jarek. The Tragedy of the Jews of Slovakia 1938-1945: Slovakia and the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". Translated by Mensfeld, Jarek. Oświęcim and Banská Bystrica: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and Museum of the Slovak National Uprising. pp. 111–139. ISBN 83-88526-15-4.
  • Ward, James Mace (2013). Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia. Ithaka: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801468124.
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