Sam Fried, 87, passed away on Monday, April 11, in Omaha, Nebraska. Memorial services were held April 14, at Beth El Synagogue in Omaha.
He is survived by his loving wife Frances Fried; children, Susan Fried of Boston, Masssachusetts, Sandi and Ed Fried of Leawood, Kansas, Julie and Jim Fried of Omaha, Kimberly and Andrew Robinson of Omaha, Mark Robinson of Solana Beach, California, and Nancy Robinson Rech of Omaha; and 14 grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his loving wife Magda Fried, and daughter-in-law Paula Robinson.
According to the Omaha World-Herald, Mr. Fried was Nebraska’s most widely known Holocaust survivor. He wore the prison ID A-5053 on his left arm, survived Auschwitz and said he never forgot the concentration camp smell of burning flesh.
Sam Fried had an idyllic childhood in Rakosin, Czechoslovakia. But in 1944, his family and other Jewish families were rounded up by Nazis and placed on cattle-car trains to Auschwitz.
He was about 15 when he got off the train and told captors he was 18. A doctor — he said it was the notorious Josef Mengele — sent Sam to a work camp but ordered his parents to the gas chambers.
His mother’s last words to him: “Save yourself.”
Fried was often beaten, and his weight dropped to a skin-and-bones 80 pounds. But on a forced march to another camp, in early 1945, he hid under a bed and escaped into the woods, eventually meeting up with Russian soldiers.
In Europe after the war, he married Magda, also an Auschwitz survivor. They arrived in America in August 1949, and he often said he was “born the day I came to this country.”
Eventually the Frieds settled in Omaha, where Sam owned and operated a successful business, Master Electronics.
During most of that time he kept a low profile regarding his Holocaust experience. In 1979, though, after a neo-Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois, Sam and Magda began speaking out. Over the next 30-plus years, he spoke to thousands of students and raised money to start university programs on genocide and other atrocities.
In his later years, Fried became the impetus behind the creation of an academic chair at University of Nebraska-Omaha. An endowment fund started by the Frieds has grown to more than $1 million, supporting Holocaust education at UNO and four other campuses: Creighton University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Wayne State College.
The family suggests donations to the Sam and Frances Fried Holocaust and Genocide Education Fund (#01133430) at The University of Nebraska Foundation, P. O. Box 82555, Lincoln, NE 68501.