From Temple Beth
Solomon of the Deaf
Northridge, CA
CHARLOTTE STERN FRIEDMAN – Chana Faga Bas Itzchok
JULY 20, 1920 — APRIL 13, 2019
“She thought she would never get through the battery of examiners and clerks. Three times she had to answer questions orally, and six times she had to raise her hand in oath. Then she could sit down. Her knees were shaking so that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to stand up any more.
She fumbled into her bag and pulled out some papers. She looked at them with blurred eyes. They were concrete evidence of her new citizenship. Was she really and truly an American citizen? Yes she was, at last! This girl was none other than Charlotte Stern.…Charlotte arrived in New York, a refugee from Hitler’s madness, a bewildered girl who had no working knowledge of English…”
Excerpted from: “Welcome, American Citizen”, by Arthur Simon published in the “Volta Review”, July, 1945
Over the 49 years that Charlotte “Lotte” Stern Friedman had been a dedicated TBS member, we have many times honored and celebrated her. There were many facets to Lotte: a wonderful artist, Holocaust Survivor, nurse, Sisterhood member, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, Deaf community member, expert lip-reader just to name a few. Although the tragedy of the Holocaust shaped and influenced her life in numerous ways, her amazing elegance, strength, and tenacity guided her through 98 years; a testament of a life well lived and a powerful Woman of Valor.
Lotte was born to Max and Anna Stern in Aachen, Germany near the border of Belgium and Holland in 1920. World War I had ended only one year before Max and Anna were married and the ravaged economy reflected the years of war. Nutrition was poor and Anna had a difficult pregnancy and Lotte was born underweight and deaf. Her deafness was not discovered until the age of two when she became very ill with Typhoid Fever. In Lotte’s autobiography written in 2002 she said, “I was very slow in learning and was not able to say a word. Later I realized that I had not been able to hear a sound.”
While recovering from Typhoid, Lotte happened to walk too close to the hot porcelain stove in her home. Her mother yelled a warning across the room and was then struck with the shocking realization that Lotte had not heard her at all. Deafness was an entirely new world to Max and Anna, but the doctors were very encouraging and told them that she would be able to grow up normally and could learn to talk. They were advised to visit a school for the deaf to get an idea of what she could accomplish. After their visit they were relieved to learn that she could live a normal life in the hearing world but she was too young yet to enter school.
Lotte’s parents realized that time was critical to educate their child properly and they didn’t want to wait until the required age of six to start school so they hired a private teacher. Lotte remembered, Fraulein Wirtz, as an extremely strict taskmaster having no understanding of deafness and classified Lotte as “lazy,” incorporating a curriculum of physical punishment to motivate her.
With her mother’s help, Lotte slowly began to speak. She simultaneously shocked and thrilled her father one day by telling him, “Mach tuer zu.” (close the door.) Lotte’s parents thought it would be a good idea for her to attend kindergarten to improve her socialization skills, but because of her lack of ability to speak clearly or hear the other children this intervention failed completely and her frustration led to misbehaving.
Lotte was a deeply curious child and tested the patience of her parents on several occasions, often finding herself in trouble. Being an only child, Lotte was lonely when her mother was too busy to entertain her and she longed to know what went on outside the walls of her house. At the age of four, she donned a new pair of lederhosen (leather shorts) and hat with a feather, which gave her a sense of adventure, and she headed for the train. She managed to escape through the heavy front doors of their home, running around the corner so she wouldn’t be seen and made her way a mile and a half to the small train station called “Rote Erde” (Red Earth). She thought about boarding the train and walked up to the platform but the wind was blowing so hard that she went into the station instead. Aachen was occupied by the Belgian army in the post World War I years and inside the station soldiers were on duty.
“With great surprise I could read one soldier’s lips asking me what I was doing, but I was unable to say anything. An officer entered and looked at me but I was very confused and started to cry. The officer was a neighbor and recognized me. He started to take me home but I refused to go with him so he bought me some ice cream or candy, I don’t remember which and I followed him back to my house. Boy! I saw a crowd in front of the apartment, my mother in the midst, crying and screaming until someone saw me and pointed to me. She saw me and fainted! My father came on his bicycle from work and of course was very angry with me….I was pretty satisfied with myself for causing this commotion. I had not much common sense.”
Lotte’s solo expedition out into the greater world increased her appetite for more adventure. Several weeks later, again dressed in her lederhosen and feather hat she attempted another escape. This time the laundry woman saw the feathered hat bobbing across the cellar window, ran up the stairs and caught her as she was trying to open the front doors. This time her lederhosen and hat were taken from her and she was punished to cool her wanderlust.
Lotte was characterized as a mischievous child, but in actuality she was only trying to analyze and comprehend the world as she maneuvered through it. Without the daily auditory input one usually receives as they grow up, a deaf child automatically uses their innate visual and tactile abilities to fill the deficit. As most young children, she was required to take a nap everyday, but she would have much preferred using the time to explore. Because of the continuing wartime shortages, electricity was rationed so her room was lit by candlelight. Her mother put her to bed for a nap and put out the candle but forgot to remove the matches. Lotte’s inquisitive nature and little hands got very busy trying to re-light the candle. She burned her finger, dropped the match and started a fire. Realizing something was wrong, although not completely understanding it, she knew to get help. Her mother, angry that she had gotten up from her nap, took her back to her room and discovered the wall and bed ablaze, immediately throwing a pitcher of water on the fire.
Anna Stern had suffered several miscarriages after Lotte’s birth, but now eight years later, there was great happiness in the house when Lotte’s new sister, Liesel, was born. Lotte did not completely share in this joy, since for the prior nine months, she was planning on having a brother and this baby girl did not figure into her plan, creating an angry and rebellious Lotte. The following year an influenza epidemic swept the country, claiming the life of Anna Stern, still in a weakened state.
Lotte had the good fortune of meeting Minna Buxbaum, the aunt of the family who lived upstairs and her life took a wonderful turn. This lovely woman took a genuine interest in Lotte, helping her with drawing, sewing as well as her speech and they became very fond of each other. On one of Minna’s visits Lotte mentioned to her father over dinner how sweet and interesting Fraulein Minna was, which prompted Max Stern to make a date with her. A romance blossomed between them and they married a year after Anna’s death in 1929.
Minna, who Lotte called, “Mutti” (little mother) was a determined woman who loved Liesel and Lotte as her own. She steered Lotte toward the proper education she would need to survive in the hearing world. Minna helped her perfect her lip-reading skills, involved her in sports and taught her to be independent and unafraid of life’s challenges.
When Minna and Max returned from their honeymoon they found Lotte and Liesel unattended, dirty and scraggly; it appeared the servants had also taken a vacation. Mutti fired them, ran a bath, sat Lotte down and placed Liesel on Lotte’s lap. Liesel smiled at her and Lotte finally fell in love with her baby sister. They kept an unbreakable bond throughout their lives promising each other that they would be together in need. They kept that promise laughing and crying together, happy and sad. A resilient Lotte would say, “That’s life!”
In 1933, when Hitler came to power, a system of discrimination and boycotts were insidiously instituted. At thirteen, when Lotte was to graduate from school, an edict was announced that Jewish children could not attain higher public education. Again, Lotte’s parents recruited private tutors to continue her education and sent her to private art school to further her aptitude in the arts. She fell in love with sculpture but because of the large space it required, her father encouraged the fine arts instead.
With all Minna’s encouragement and preparation, Lotte was equipped to leave home at 17 and moved to Berlin to study at The Private Art School, which had a few openings for Jews. The only choice of classes she had was in fashion, commercial art and calligraphy none of which pleased her. It was difficult to take her studies seriously since she couldn’t follow the instructors and there were no tutors available. But thanks to the independence that Minna instilled in her, Lotte spent her time exploring Berlin and fell in love with the city. She felt she would stay in Berlin forever, but after only a year and a half, in November of 1938, Lotte witnessed an atrocity that would profoundly leave her scarred.
As she walked to school, on the morning of November 10th, 1938, the sights and smells of terror began slowly seeping into her consciousness as she saw the remnants of peoples lives littering the streets and sidewalks.
“I noticed broken glass on the sidewalks, Jewish stores broken into; their items on the street mixed with the glass. Then I noticed the Temple on the same street burned out and prayer books thrown out like trash. I was stunned but kept on going, passing Kurfuerstendam Street where the exclusive department stores and other businesses were also destroyed. Crowds stood in front of them, some were still burning and one of the owners stood there stunned, being spat at, pushed, kicked and his glasses torn from his face and stepped on.” She watched as Nazis broke every window of the largest perfume factory in Germany. Gallons of perfume flowed down the gutters as her head swirled with disbelief smelling a mixture of fragrance and burned things. She hurried to school where the secretary told her, “Go home!!” She had no idea what had happened because she could not hear the radio. After the secretary explained Lotte realized she must leave Berlin immediately. She quickly packed her belongings and asked the proprietor of the boarding house to contact her father and tell him she was on her way home.
Lotte was born in a Catholic hospital and her birth certificate luckily registered her as Catholic. She went to the police station, with her heart pounding, to get an ID that would allow her to travel. Jews were only allowed 3rd class tickets, and she was terrified someone would think she looked Jewish and she’d be caught. To be safe, she saluted soldiers as she encountered them, and bought a 2nd class train ticket. During her eight-hour trip home, she sat in stark fear that someone would start asking her questions so she mustered up her calmest demeanor so as not to attract any attention.
At one of the train stops, the door opened and a man in a crisp new Nazi uniform entered the compartment. He saluted Lotte with raised arm and she returned the required salute. He took her hand in his white glove, shook it, and began to speak disparagingly about the Jews, having no idea that she was Jewish since she was traveling in 2nd class. She nodded, pretended to listen and held her breath in terror. At the next stop, he wished her a good trip, saluted and exited the train.
When the train arrived in Aachen, the limousine driver who had driven her parents for special occasions approached her, took her baggage and silently loaded it into the vehicle. Inside the car, to her surprise was mutti, who filled her in on the recent events.
Liesel, with a forged passport, had already left for Holland to stay with her father’s sister, Frieda. Max had been arrested, turned in by the family maid, but by sheer luck had been released after his mandatory physical examination. Max recognized the examining doctor from his military service. The doctor stamped Max’s papers and told the staff he was to be released because his old war wounds did not make him a good candidate to work for the Nazis.
Max had made many connections through his textile business over the years and using those connections he was able to get passports for the immediate family. Two weeks later they boarded a train to Rotterdam. Through God’s grace, the soldier checking the passports did not notice the second page identifying them as Jewish and allowed them to board.
Sadly the rest of the family: grandparents, aunts and uncles perished in Auschwitz. Lotte’s deaf classmates, who were not murdered, were sterilized.
The economy in Holland at this time was devastated; refugees were pouring over the border causing further economic hardship on the country. The Dutch government was interning all aliens, doing the best they could under the difficult circumstances, but the accommodations were not much better than a concentration camp.
When they arrived, their passports were taken and the family was held in Rotterdam in a detention facility with barbed wire and guard dogs so no one could leave. The men and women were examined and sent to sleep in separate buildings with straw beds, appalling food, and only cold showers, even though it was winter. After a few weeks they were transferred to an Amsterdam hotel, but still under guard. Eventually Max and Minna were released to an apartment near his sister, Frieda, but Lotte had to stay in detention. During this time Lotte worked with nurses taking care of the medical needs of the detainees; some of them, from concentration camps were in very poor health. As a result of this experience, Lotte decided she wanted to study medicine.
At age 19, she was finally released but the law forbid her to live with her parents, so she had to live alone. She enjoyed having more freedom but had a strict curfew and had to report monthly to the Dutch police to get her passport stamped so they could keep track of her. Nine months later, Lotte’s aunt managed to get them into an apartment and Lotte worked as a maid in a home, where each day the lady of the house would put on white gloves to run over the furniture to make sure it was dusted properly.
Lotte knew Anne Frank (famous for book, “The Diary of Anne Frank”), as a child in Aachen. Anne’s grandmother lived down the street from them and the Frank family moved there from Frankfort. Often the Sterns and the Franks would socialize and their children went to school together. Both families escaped to Holland at the same time, but Mr. Frank stubbornly refused to leave Holland, while Max knew danger was brewing and they must leave. In 1940, Max secured the needed passports and visas for the family and left Holland boarding the S. S. Volendam for an eleven-day journey to New York. The seas were rough and stormy for most of the trip and many of the passengers suffered seasickness. They wore inflated vests for the first couple of days until they safely maneuvered through the minefields in the English Channel, all the while watching warplanes flying overhead between England and Germany.
“I noticed the ship stood still one morning; I looked out of the cabin window and got numb watching the Statue of Liberty go by. I learned it was George Washington’s birthday and found out he was the first President of the United States. My heart was beating so hard and it was difficult to believe that we got to the USA safely!” George Washington’s birthday became Lotte’s anniversary of freedom.
All of the passengers were released except her. The U.S. had a policy about admitting anyone with a disability or mental illness but she had a letter of sponsorship from a family member in San Francisco. The doctors and staff did the required interview with her and were a bit confused as to why she was there. How could she be deaf when she spoke so well? So they faced her away and tested her, proving that she was indeed deaf. After many questions they gave her back her passport and allowed her to join her much relieved family. Lotte recalls her fear at the possibility of being denied admission and admitted that it ran through her head to jump overboard and end her life if she was declined.
While adjusting to her new home in New York, Lotte spent several months working temporary jobs. She had learned how to make leather gloves in Amsterdam and found work doing that. She made sketches for a wallpaper factory and worked in several places polishing display models.
In 1940, with a scholarship from the Jewish Federation, Lotte was able to attend the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis. Traveling on the bus from New York to St. Louis, Lotte was amazed at what a big place America was.
In exchange for room and board at CID, she cared for a deaf child with Cerebral Palsy for two years while she learned English. She then moved to Los Angeles taking a job as a technical designer at an automotive school.
In 1945, Arthur Simon wrote an article about Lotte’s experience that was included in the publication, “The Volta Review”, along with her picture. It was seen and cut out by Irvin Friedman, who was the President and co-founder of the Hebrew Association of the Deaf in Chicago. When Irvin attended a convention of the Jewish Deaf in Los Angeles, he showed the picture around and was able to obtain Lotte’s address. From that time it took only three months for Irvin to contact her, meet, court and woo her. On November 7th, 1948 they were married in a small Jewish chapel on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. Lotte and Irvin spent the next 22 years in Chicago, Irvin’s hometown, raising their two sons, Joey and Myron.
Following the dream of her youth to pursue the medical field, Lotte went back to school at the age of 57 graduating in 1977 as a Licensed Vocational Nurse from Los Angeles Trade Technical College. She did all of her hands-on training at Good Samaritan Hospital and passed a grueling written test. She and her four deaf classmates: Koni Battad, Adrienne Riley, Genivive Baldwin and Lenna Schwaringen had proven their nursing ability by the state standards but were denied licensure from the state of California simply because they were deaf. They filed a complaint to appeal the decision, but there were no discrimination laws in those days and the judgment held. Lotte refused to be be discouraged and was hired at St. John of God to take care of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease.
Lotte and Irvin moved to Los Angeles and devoted themselves to Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf, beginning in 1970, during TBS’ 10th anniversary. Lotte immediately offered her calligraphy and artistic skills, while Irvin founded the Men’s Club. They both received numerous awards for their work and many years on the Board of Directors and the Sisterhood. Lotte mourned Irvin’s death in 1996, but remained an active member of the TBS Board until 2010.
In the spring of 1992, Lotte apprehensively returned to Aachen, Germany for the first time since her escape in 1938. Aachen’s Society of Christian-Jewish Cooperation had been trying to create a Christian-Jewish dialog and in 1989 they began gathering the names and addresses of pre-war residents of Aachen to invite to a homecoming. 204 survivors accepted the invitation to make the trip back to a past they had tried to forget.
“When I was first asked to join the group, I must confess that I was, as were the immediate members of my family, rather reluctant to accept the invitation. In my own mind I was not sure that I really wanted to go back and relive the sights and scenes of my last memories of Germany. My exit in 1938 had been a life-saving device for me and my family, an occurrence for which, up to now, I could not forgive the German people,” Lotte said.
Charlotte Stern Friedman was an amazing woman, a role model for the generations. She faced enormous discrimination both as a Jew and as a Deaf woman; more than most of us can ever imagine. But she defied these obstacles with dignity, perseverance and a vast capacity for love that clearly defined who she was. We are honored to have known her and hope this short telling of some of her story will inspire and encourage others in their journey through life. Her life will always be a sweet blessing.
To honor Lotte Friedman’s life and memory, Joe requests that any donations be made to charities devoted to the preservation of and education about the Deaf Holocaust Experience.
One such organization is the NTID Deaf Holocaust Experience Preservative Fund.
Checks payable to NTID/RIT and mail it to:
Bryan Hensel
NTID Development
52 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623
NTID/RIT is an 501(c)3 organization, your gift is tax deductible.
May Lotte Friedman Rest In Peace
July 20, 1920 – April 13, 2019
Source: Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf
