Hello and welcome to ways to change the world. I'm Christian Guru Murthy, and this is

the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas and their lives

and the events that have helped shape them. My guest this week has lived through the

most extraordinary events of the 20th century. Tova Friedman was one of the youngest survivors

of the Auschwitz death camp. I remember turning to the person next to me,

little girl, and I said, where are they crying? Don't all Jewish children go to the guest

chamber? Her family came from Poland, went through various concentration camps and she ended up

in Auschwitz, but remarkably both her and her mother and her father, who had been separated earlier,

all ended up surviving and came back together. And she has written an extraordinary history of her

time in her life called the daughter of Auschwitz together with the journalist Malcolm Brabant.

And she's here with her grandson Aaron, who is also taking her story to a new generation

through the medium of TikTok. Tova, thank you very much for coming. Why is it so important to you

to tell your story this way? Well, first of all, talking is not the same like writing.

When it's on paper, it takes much more thought. And you think in the quiet, the quiet time,

and all these things come up. So that's a different quality to writing. You're just standing up and

just talk to whatever happens. And especially now, when I think the world, for some reason,

hasn't been listening, really. Antisemitism and hatred, the world has divided all over again.

What's going on? And I thought it was timely now. And also, I found the right person to work with.

Did you believe people are forgetting? Absolutely. Absolutely. Either they're forgetting or they

didn't listen to begin with. You were so young, you've written a very detailed account. How do you

remember so much? Well, you know, that's interesting. First of all, I was with my mother a lot.

And she was the kind of person when I said, is that true that so far? She says, yes.

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