A Spot on this Earth

Born in 1928 in a small village in the Carpathian Mountain region of what is now Ukraine, Arnold (Ërno) Friedman, the oldest of 5 children born to Esther (Palkovics) and Szigmond Friedman, suffered the loss of his entire family to the Nazi killing machine and, orphaned and alone, endured almost a year of hell in the death and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, including Auschwitz, Gross Rosen and Dachau. Liberated by the Americans during a death march near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in early May 1945, Arnold, only 16 years old, made his way first to Scotland, and then eventually to Canada, settling in Toronto in 1947 and starting his life anew.

Liliana Bryman was born on July 14, 1938, in Łód´z, Poland, the only child of Regina (Ginia) and Salomon Bryman. Forced into the Łód´z ghetto with her family at the age of three, Lili spent her childhood surrounded by starvation, disease, death, and the slow and deliberate dehumanization of those around her. Remarkably, she survived, spending four years in the ghetto and then time in Auschwitz, Stutthof, Flossenburg and Dresden. After watching her father die on the side of a road during a death march two weeks before the end of the war, Lili and her mother were liberated from Theresienstadt in early May 1945. Lili was just 6 years old. After spending a year in Poland, and then some time in France, she arrived in Canada in 1951.

Married in 1959, together they built a family and created a legacy for themselves, for future generations, and in memory of the loved ones they lost forever in the Holocaust.

This is their story.