Vogue Germany Features 102-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Margot Friedländer on Historic Cover
The cover of the July/August issue of Vogue Germany with 102-year-old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer is perhaps an unprecedented issue in the history of women's magazines. At her age, Margot is one of the oldest people to grace the cover of the fashion bible.
It's no coincidence that German Vogue chose a celebrity model for its latest cover, who regularly interacts with high-ranking guests and walks the red carpet at film premieres. Margot Friedländer, 102, is one of the world's oldest and most prominent Holocaust survivors.
In her youth, Friedländer dreamed of becoming a dressmaker and fashion designer. In 1936, she entered the Berlin School of Arts and Crafts and learnt to draw in fashion and advertising and wanted to design her own clothes and had big plans to study to become a dressmaker, but the Holocaust changed everything.
In addition to documenting Friedländer's impeccable clothes and indefatigable spirit, the Vogue article includes her public condemnation of the rise of the political far right in Germany.
Of the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, and the spike in anti-Semitic incidents during the war between Israel and Hamas terrorists, Margot Friedländer told the magazine: "I am stunned."
She also speaks of concern that more and more young people are attracted to the right-wing slogans of the AfD, that anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise and that politicians are being attacked in public. After all, she was 12 years old when Hitler came to power. She remembers exactly how it started back then. Therefore, she also speaks on behalf of the victims who are no longer with us.
Margot Friedländer was born in 1921 in Berlin, a German Jew. Her family was murdered by the Nazis, and she hid in Berlin for some time, but in 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
There she met her future husband Adolf Friedländer, whom she married shortly after her release. Together with him, she immigrated to the United States. He died in 1997. Years later, she decided to return to Berlin, despite doubts about whether it was the right decision to return to the land of her abusers.
With her memoir, Try to Make a Life for Yourself, written in 2008, she travelled the country to spread her message to the current generation.
But Margot Friedlander was and still is a woman who follows fashion. Her wardrobe in her apartment in a Berlin nursing home occupies a large and important place, as Vogue notes with great interest. In addition to the "vintage" clothes that Margot still wears, there are also items of clothing and accessories from famous designers.
The photo shoot for Vogue took place in the botanical garden of the Free University of Berlin. Margot Friedländer was photographed in cheerful, colourful dresses with floral motifs, always smiling and friendly.
Her favourite accessory is a memento of her mother - a large amber necklace that she wears only on important occasions.
