Select Friedman Miscellany



Here are some Friedman stories and accounts over the years:

Friedman Name Origins


The German surname of Friedman was derived from a combination of a patronymic and a local source.  The element Fried was derived from an old Germanic personal name which tended to be handed down from generation to generation.  This name was a pet form of the popular medieval name Fridila, composed of the elements vriedel ("loved one") or vridelin ("peace-maker").  It was also the locational name for someone who lived near or in a wood.

The name was born by a canonized 9th century bishop of Utrecht and was a hereditary name of the medieval Hohenstaufen ruling family in SW Germany.

Friedmans to America by Place of Origin

From:
 Numbers
 Percent



Germany
   242
   36
Russia
   131
   20
Hungary
   112
   17
Poland
   105
   16
Elsewhere
    80
   11


Friedman Emigrants: 1840-1870

These were some of the Friedmans that emigrated from Europe from the 1840's to the 1870's:

Name
 From:
 Date
 To:




Franklin Fridman 
Germany (Wurttenburg)
 1840's
Kentucky       
Joseph Friedman
 Germany (Baden)
 1840's
 Missouri
Max Friedman
 Germany (Muhlhausen)
 1850
 NYC
Aaron Friedman
 Poland (Stavisk)
 1850's
 NYC
Chaim Fridman
 Lithuania
 1856
 Australia
David Friedman
 Latvia (Libau)
 1860's
 England
Joseph Friedman
 Latvia (Kurland)
 1860's
 NYC
Herman Friedman
 Lithuania
 1865
 Texas
Johan Friedman
 Germany (Pfalz)
 1871
 NYC


Friedman Emigrants: 1880-1910


These were some later migrants:

Name
 From:
 Date
 To:




Abraham Friedman 
Hungary
 1882
 USA
Jacob Friedman
 Hungary (Kirchdraft)
 1880's 
USA
Jacob Friedman
 Hungary (Chelmno)
 1900
 South America   
Louis Friedman
 Hungary
 1900's
 Pittsburgh
Jacob Friedman
 Hungary (Debrecen)
 1900's
 Ohio
Jeno Friedman
 Hungary (Beregszasz)
 1900's
 NYC
Solomon Friedman
 Romania (Jassy)
 1904
 NYC
Charles Friedman
 Moldova (then Bessarabia)
 1904
 Illinois
Adolph Friedman
 Hungary (Debrecen)
 1906
 NYC
Nathan Friedman
 Ukraine (Zhythomyr)
 1911
 Canada


Friedmans from Lithuania to Jerusalem

Boris Friedman of Johannesburg gave the following account of the Friedmans who came to Jerusalem:

"An orphan boy named Hersch Zaidel was brought to Jerusalem in Palestine in the middle of the 19th century by a childless uncle Reb Hersch Friedman from Ponavesz in Lithuania.   Hersch Zaidel adopted the name of his uncle, hence Hersch Friedman.

At the same time some good people brought to Jerusalem a little orphan girl of nine, Eigeleh (Eiga) from Pasvalys in Lithuania, who had lost her mother at a very young age.  Hersch married Eiga in Jerusalem when Hersh was twenty one and Eiga was twelve.  Eiga gave birth to her first child at the age of sixteen.  They had ten children, of whom seven survived." 

Later branches of this family migrated to South Africa and Australia.


Friedmans in Natchitotes, Louisiana

A Jewish cemetery was established in Natchitotes, Louisiana in 1847.  The following Friedmans were buried there.

Name
   Birth
   Death



Friedman, Samuel
   1848
   1888
Friedman, Harry
   1881
   1895
Friedman, Caroline
   1847
   1906
Friedman, Samuel
   1868
   1931
Friedman, Isadore
   1885
   1943
Friedman, Leon
   1886
   1948
Friedman, Isaac
   1871
   1949
Friedman, Henrietta
   1872
   1959
Friedman, Mamye
   1880
   1959
Friedman, Harry
   1911
   1965
Friedman, Elizabeth
   1912
   1969
Friedman, Sylvan N.
   1908
   1979


Milton Friedman's Upbringing


The famous economist Milton Friedman described his growing up as follows:

"I was born July 31, 1912, in Brooklyn, N.Y., the fourth and last child and first son of Sarah Ethel (Landau) and Jeno Saul Friedman.  My parents were born in Carpatho-Ruthenia (then a province of Austria-Hungary).  They emigrated to the US in their teens, meeting in New York. 

When I was a year old, my parents moved to Rahway, N.J., a small town about 20 miles from New York City.  There my mother ran a small retail "dry goods" store while my father engaged in a succession of mostly unsuccessful "jobbing" ventures.  The family income was small and highly uncertain.  Financial crisis was a constant companion.  Yet there was always enough to eat and the family atmosphere was warm and supportive.

Along with my sisters, I attended public elementary and secondary schools, graduating from Rahway High School in 1928, just before my 16th birthday.  My father died during my senior year in high school, leaving my mother plus two older sisters to support the family.  Nonetheless, it was taken for granted that I would attend college, though, also, that I would have to finance myself."


It was college which provided him with the way forward.

"I was awarded a competitive scholarship to Rutgers University, then a relatively small university. There I had the good fortune to be exposed to two remarkable men: Arthur F. Burns, then teaching at Rutgers while completing his doctoral dissertation for Columbia; and Homer Jones, teaching between spells of graduate work at the University of Chicago. 

Arthur Burns shaped my understanding of economic research, introduced me to the highest scientific standards, and became a guiding influence on my subsequent career.  Homer Jones introduced me to rigorous economic theory, made economics exciting and relevant, and encouraged me to go on to graduate work."


Lily Friedman's Wedding Gown


Lily Friedman doesn’t remember the last name of the woman who designed and sewed the wedding gown she wore when she walked down the aisle more than 60 years ago.  But the grandmother of seven does recall that when she first told her fiancé Ludwig that she had always dreamed of being married in a white gown.

She had been raised with her siblings in a Torah-observant home in the small town of Zarica, Czechoslovakia where her father was a melamed (teacher), respected and well liked by the young yeshiva students he taught in nearby Irsheva.  He and his two sons were marked for extermination immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz.  For Lily and her sisters it was only their first stop on their long journey of persecution, which included Plashof, Neustadt, Gross-Rosen and finally Bergen-Belsen. 

On January 27, 1946, four hundred people marched 15 miles in the snow to the town of Celle to attend Lily and Ludwig’s wedding.  The town synagogue, damaged and desecrated, had been lovingly renovated by the DPs with the meager materials available to them.  When a sefer Torah arrived from England, they converted an old kitchen cabinet into a makeshift Aron Kodesh.

When President Truman finally permitted the 100,000 Jews who had been languishing in DP camps since the end of the war to emigrate in 1948, the gown accompanied Friedman across the ocean to America.  Unable to part with her dress, it lay at the bottom of her bedroom closet in Brooklyn for the next fifty years: “not even good enough for a garage sale.  I was happy when it found such a good home.”

Friedman’s dress had one more journey to make — the Bergen-Belsen museum which opened on October 28, 2007.  The German government invited Friedman and her sisters to be their guests for the grand opening. Although they initially declined the invitation, the family finally traveled to Hanover the following year with their children, their grandchildren and extended families to view the extraordinary exhibit created for the wedding dress made from a parachute.





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