The house on Ben Yehuda Street
Those who pass by Ben Yehuda Street in Haifa and arrive at house number 31 will see a city sign next to the building with the inscription: "Tovia Friedman House", the place where the documentation institute founded at the time by the Nazi hunter Tovia Friedman used to be.
Tovia Friedman
Tovia Friedman was born and raised in the city of Radom in Poland in 1922. After the outbreak of World War II, the Germans entered Radom and he was sent to a labor camp in Cheshanow, along with a thousand other Jews, where he worked digging anti-tank trenches in the German border area. He managed to escape to Radom and found his family members, but was imprisoned in the city's ghetto along with his family members and the rest of the city's Jews.
In 1943, the Radom ghetto was liquidated and Tovia was transferred to the 'Skulana' labor camp. He managed to escape from the camp through a sewer and hid in a cemetery, but the locals handed him over to the Nazi soldiers. Although the Germans intended to execute him, Tovia killed the guard and escaped death. After the war ended, his goal was to chase the Nazis and avenge the death of his family members. He devoted his life to collecting evidence concerning Nazi criminals in order to bring them to justice.
After the occupation of Radom by the Russian army, Friedman came out of hiding and joined the ranks of the Polish police and tried to help the Holocaust refugees who returned from the concentration and extermination camps. He was appointed an investigative officer at the Polish Ministry of Defense in Danzig and arrested hundreds of Nazi Germans, including SS officer Konrad Buchmeier. who made names in the Jews of Radom. He tracked down other Nazi officers, Eichard Scheigel, who sent Jews from Radom to the Treblinka extermination camp, the SS man Unterscharführer Konrad Buchmeier, the head of the SS and the police chief in Radom, Herbert Bettcher, with his main goal being to find and locate Adolf Eichmann.
Tovia Friedman arrives in Haifa
Tovia Friedman immigrated to Israel in 1952 and settled in Haifa (he lived at 55 Tschernihovski Street). In Haifa he managed a branch of "Yad Vashem" and worked as a journalist and engaged in locating and assisting in the capture of Nazi war criminals. After a certain period of work at Yad Vashem, he re-established the organization called the "Institute for Documentation in Israel for the Study of the Activities of Nazi Criminals" and devoted much effort to documenting the testimonies of Holocaust survivors.
The Institute for Documentation in Israel and the connection to Eichmann
As mentioned, the Institute for Documentation in Israel was founded by Tovia Friedman in 1957 at 31 Ben Yehuda St., in Hadar Haifa. He published ads in foreign newspapers in which a monetary reward was offered to anyone who provided information on Eichmann's whereabouts. Tovia Friedman collected photographs of European Jews in the ghettos, in the extermination camps, some of which were taken before executions were carried out. You can see such a photograph that still hangs on the outside of the building on one of the windows. Tovia Friedman was one of the people who assisted in the capture of Adolf Eichmann.
With the encouragement of Arthur Ben Natan, he managed to obtain a recent photograph of Eichmann and worked to locate the torturer's hiding place. He collected many materials about him and later handed them over to the Israel Police. Following a piece of information he learned that Eichmann was in Argentina, and it was thanks to a letter he received from a half-Jewish German who lived in Argentina at the time, Luther Hermann was his name, who was persecuted at the time by the Nazis.
The details that were discovered contributed greatly to Eichmann's capture in Argentina. After Eichmann was captured, Friedman gave the Israeli police a file with 400 pages that contained material on Eichmann, a file he worked on for 15 years. In 1961 he published his autobiographical book "The Hunter".
And today?
It saddens me to see how the place where Tovia Friedman's institute operated, a life's work of one man, remains neglected and abandoned with smashed windows.. You can see from the outside through the broken windows, old objects thrown and broken. When I asked passers-by on the street, which of them could tell me about the man who founded the institute, they said they had not heard of the man, Tovia Friedman. Tovia and his wife Anna had an only son named Roni. Friedman died in 2011, and is buried in Haifa.
Interesting and important. thanks.
Dear Naftali
Thank you for the exciting things you shared, you knew him and I learned about him from you.
An interesting article, kudos to Sabrina for taking it upon herself to write about such important issues in the city's history.
Tovia Friedman was a friend of mine and I worked with him on various projects.
The highlight was the production of a documentary film about Tovia that was filmed in Israel, Austria and Poland by a Polish production company from the city of Gdansk, (Danzig).
The film was shown and praised at the Jewish Film Festival in Warsaw, in the presence of Tovia Friedman and I traveled with Tovia, we were guests of the festival.
More details:
Tovia Friedman's wife was a doctor at Rambam Hospital.
His son Yechats was an outstanding athlete and was killed in a diving accident in Eilat.
Tovia's only relative is his nephew who lives in Holon, and his name is Amir Kenyon.
Amir, privately established the "Holocaust Museum named after Tovia Friedman" located in Holon.
The late Tovia Friedman was a close friend of my father
Meir Hanig, often came to the business
of my father, they sat and talked a lot. Helped me personally
in a foreign language when I stayed in the business without my father.
His memory will forever be in my heart.
And where is his archive today with all the evidence he collected?
Shame and an opportunity for Haifa Municipality to return what is still left and move it to Lid Vashem.
What an empowering and sad story of heroism at the same time. It is important that it was immortalized by urban signage, it certainly deserves it. Beautiful article.
His only son Roni Frediman died in a diving accident - a sad story
Tovia Friedman acted as he should, pursued the Nazis who murdered his family members, pursued the tyrant named Adolf Eichmann, a man who did justice to his generation. May his memory be blessed