The square directly in front of Berlin’s state parliament has officially been renamed in honour of Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer.
The unveiling ceremony for the new “Margot-Friedländer-Platz” took place at the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin, nearly a year after Friedländer’s death at the age of 103.
Speaking during the commemorative event in the parliamentary chamber, president of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin Cornelia Seibeld said the dedication honoured “a great Berliner and a person whose life obliges us to remember permanently”.
Seibeld recalled that Friedländer moved to the United States after being liberated from the The Holocaust and surviving the Theresienstadt concentration camp. However, in 2010 she returned to Berlin, determined to educate younger generations about the crimes of National Socialism and the dangers of antisemitism.
“Her mission was clear: to speak for those who no longer could,” Seibeld said. “She carried out that mission tirelessly, especially with young people.” She added that naming the square after Friedländer would serve as a lasting reminder of the responsibility to remain vigilant and to defend democratic values.
Berlin’s Governing Mayor, Kai Wegner, described Friedländer as proof that “humanity can triumph over inhumanity”. He praised her enduring faith in tolerance and compassion, while noting that she had also warned repeatedly about growing antisemitism and threats to democracy.
“It is our duty to continue Margot Friedländer’s educational work with full determination,” Wegner said during the ceremony.
Friedländer died on 9 May 2025 at the age of 103. Born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1921, she was deported by the Nazis to Theresienstadt during the Second World War. After liberation in 1945, she emigrated to the United States with her husband. Decades later, at the age of 88, she returned permanently to the German capital, where she became one of the country’s most prominent voices of Holocaust remembrance and civic responsibility.
She was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee.
