Holocaust survivor Gideon Frieder will share his heroic story of survival at 7 p.m. Monday, March 9 in the Farris Center on the University of Central Arkansas campus.
Sponsored by the UCA Department of Philosophy and Religion, UCA Department of History, UCA College of Liberal Arts, UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication, UCA Schedler Honors College, Jewish Federation of Arkansas, University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the event is free and open to the public.
Frieder was born on September 30, 1937, in Zvolen, Slovakia. His family moved to the town of Nove Mesto in Slovakia at the beginning of the war after his father, a rabbi, was offered a position there. Slovak authorities deported Frieder’s grandparents in 1942; they died, most likely at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Frieder’s father was part of Slovakia’s underground “Working Group,” a secret Jewish rescue organization, and was responsible for its communications with Slovak authorities. His and his father’s life story are partially documented in the book, “To Deliver Their Souls.”
In 1944, during the Slovak uprising against the pro-German regime of Jozef Tiso, Frieder and his mother and sister fled Nove Mesto, making their way to Banská Bystrica, which served as the center of the uprising. Frieder’s father fled separately, fearing that anyone close to him would be killed if he were caught.
As German units approached Banská Bystrica, Frieder and his mother and sister fled to the mountains, where they were caught in a massacre at Stare Hory. His mother and sister were killed; Frieder was injured but survived.
A Jewish partisan, Henry Herzog, took Frieder to the village of Bully, where he was placed with the family of Paulina and Jozef Strycharszyk. Henry Herzog’s story, including his meeting the Frieder family, is detailed in the book, “…And Heaven Shed No Tears.”
Frieder remained in Bully until 1945, when Romanian troops fighting with the Soviet Army liberated the area. Frieder’s father, who also survived the war, later found Gideon. His father remarried but died in 1946.
After the war, Frieder and his stepmother came to Israel on a secret aliyah. He remained in Israel until 1975, when he immigrated to the United States. Today, he holds the A. James Clark Chair of Engineering and Applied Science at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and volunteers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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