Margot Friedländer (née Bendheim; born 5 November 1921) is a German survivor of the Holocaust and public speaker.

After emigrating to the United States with her husband in 1946, she eventually returned to live in Berlin in 2010 and began speaking to German youth about her experiences in Nazi Germany and surviving against all odds.

She has received various honours and awards for promoting human rights and fighting against antisemitism, including the Federal Cross of Merit.

Friedländer was born Anni Margot Bendheim[1] in Berlin on 5 November 1921[2] and raised in Lindenstraße in the Kreuzberg district.

[6] On 20 January 1943, Friedländer was returning home when she noticed a man standing outside the door of the family apartment on the second floor.

She often moved hiding places after dark due to Allied air raids and was aided by an underground network of 16 unnamed Germans.

She survived by living under a false identity that involved dying her hair a red colour and removing her Jewish star from her coat.

German filmmaker and producer Thomas Halaczinsky took an interest in her memoir and wanted to make a documentary of her life, which required her to return to Berlin.

[5] In 2010, she decided to return to Berlin permanently, aged 88, and began to give frequent talks about her experiences of the Holocaust, particularly in German schools.

[3] German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier congratulated her and described her as a "tireless fighter against hate, exclusion and far-right extremism".

[4] On 27 January 2022, she attended a plenary session at the European Parliament in Brussels to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

At the event she denounced COVID-19 protestors who had worn yellow stars that were similar to the Judenstern that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis.

[11] In 2014, the Schwarzkopf Foundation [de] founded the Margot Friedländer Prize, an annual award in her honour to help young people in fighting antisemitism and racism.

[12][13] On 9 November 2011, she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit with Ribbon from President Christian Wulff in Bellevue Palace.

[17] On 4 July 2022, Friedländer was awarded the Walther Rathenau Prize for outstanding lifetime achievement in foreign policy at a ceremony in Berlin.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier praised her for, "working for democracy and human rights and in fighting hatred and all forms of antisemitism and prejudice".

[18] On 23 January 2023, Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey presented her with the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

[3] Friedländer narrates passages from her autobiography as part of an audio guide city tour of Berlin by Yopegu, which begins on Skalitzer Strasse in Kreuzberg where she used to live.

[21] She appears in the series finale of Joanna Lumley's Great Cities of the World, which aired on ITV on 31 March 2022.