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Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections LibraryEllen Welch
This collection is open for research.
This collection was a gift from Mark Friedman and Ron Friedman to the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia Library on 3 December 2025.
This collection contains the personal papers of Herbert Friedman (1924-2006), documenting his survival of the Holocaust and his life afterward. Friedman's archive primarily chronicles his life in pre-Nazi-occupied Vienna, his travel on the kindertransport to and life in England, and his immigration to the United States.
Also included are materials documenting his service in the Army and his later family life in Norfolk, Virginia as a pharmacist.
Two binders of correspondence, family transcriptions, photographs, and notes labeled "Volume 1" and "Volume 2" outline Friedman's life roughly chronologically.
Also included are loose documents, including biographical pieces written by and about Friedman, photographs from his youth and time in the army, official documents, short essays written by Friedman, correspondence including requests for information about family members, and a framed article honoring Friedman. The collection also contains four books, some inscribed by friends and family.
Friedman was born in Vienna on December 11, 1924. He lived with his family in Austria until 1938 when the persecution of Jewish populations in Germany, Austria, and Poland forced the Friedman family's exit from Vienna.
Before he departed from Austria, Friedman was involved in the rescue of a woman who was drowning in the Danube Canal. Herbert, then 13 years old, and his friend Ernst Fleischer, then 15, garnered media attention in Jewish newspapers. Months later, Vienna fell to German occupation. Herbert's friend, Ernst, died in a concentration camp in 1942.
Due to the publicity of saving a woman's life, Herbert secured an appointment with the Rabbi of Austria. The Rabbi named Herbert as one of the one-thousand children slated for the Kultusgemeinde, a negotiation between the Nazis and Austrians for the transportation of children to safer locations. Herbert left on the Kindertransport to England on December 10, 1938. He remained in England for two years, where he was educated in various schools, the majority of which were bombed out of commission by the German Luftwaffe.
By December 1940, Herbert joined his family in the United States, where they had secured papers the previous year. Herbert attended Forest Park High School in Baltimore, graduating in 1942. He joined the United States Army soon after, serving in the South Pacific until 1945. Herbert attended the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and was recalled to the Army during the Korean War, in which he served as a First Lieutenant.
This collection has correspondence from young people including Herbert Friedment, of high school and college age so it is related to the History of Childhood Collection MSS 16758.
Last time Herbert Friedman used his swim team card on March 10, 1938. Hitler invaded Vienna March 12, 1938.
Her first letter from Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Includes card notification from the Hampstead National Registration Office that address must be updated to receive new ration book.