“I was quite nervous about showing the clip,” said the Fordham College at Lincoln Center and Rose Hill sociology professor. “It ran for about 10 minutes and at the end of it, I didn’t know if I had gone too far in showing it.

“But I wanted the students to see how the worst of humanity can hijack the best of humanity. Beethoven’s music was positioned as perhaps the highest creation in Western cultural history, but it was hijacked by the Nazis, and that was the irony of the performance.”

Looking around the classroom, Spiegelman saw that some of the students were in tears. Others were enraged and saddened by the consequences of the deadliest war in history. Then 100-year-old Holocaust survivor Mathilde Freund, who has been taking courses at Fordham for over 40 years, raised her hand.

“I’m very glad you showed that video,” said Freund, who shared memories about hiding from Nazis at the same time of the performance, crawling in the forests and stables of France with her mother, being captured, and then being tortured in the Montluc prison in Lyon. “Look, how horrible. While they’re performing this wonderful music of Beethoven, they’re murdering millions of innocent people. Unfortunately, my husband was among the people who died at the Buchenwald concentration camp.’”

What Freund and Spiegelman didn’t know was that they were connected through this very experience. Speigelman’s father, Seymour, a World War II army corporal, was among the U.S. troops that liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany after Freund’s husband, Fritz, was killed.

“I think it’s telepathy,” said Freund. “I was interested in this course, but I didn’t know that we would talk about the concentration camp or anything like that.”

 For Speigelman, too, this wasn’t a mere coincidence.

“To know that my father was probably within a few feet of where Mathilde’s husband laid just moves me to such great depths,” said Spiegelman, who said his father had been traumatized by what he witnessed. “He wasn’t able to speak about it until years later when I kind of pushed him and he told the story.”

From 1933 through 1945, the Nazi party created numerous concentration camps to incarcerate, torture, and kill Jews and other minority groups. Among them were the infamous Auschwitz in Poland and Buchenwald, one of the largest camps in Germany. Freund, who married her husband in 1937, said within months of marriage her family had to flee their homeland of Austria to France, where the men in her family joined the French Army. While she was in hiding, Freund said her husband managed to send her a postcard.

“He said, ‘I will still survive and when the sun shines, we will be together again,’” she said. “But he was killed.”

Losing her husband wasn’t Freund’s only tragedy. Her only brother was brutally murdered in the Massacre of Lyon on August 18, 1944. In 1952, she arrived in New York with her mother and daughter.

“Some people say we should forget the past and we shouldn’t talk about it, but I say we should never forget because innocent people were killed. It was cruelty beyond imagination. No book or video can ever represent the sorrow that a person who was there saw and lived, like me. Those seven years of my life were the most horrible times.”

Freund said that Fordham’s College at 60 program has helped her make peace with the painful memories of her past.

“It helps me so much because when I’m in the class I don’t think of anything else,” said Freund, who has been taking classes since she retired from social work in 1977. “I concentrate only on what the professor teaches. It’s one of the things that takes me away.”

She said her secret to living as long as she has is that she doesn’t allow herself to be bitter about the things she endured during the Holocaust. Instead, she would rather share her story widely so that such mass genocide never happens again.

“It’s my sacred duty,” she said. “My greatest wish in life is that I can see peace on earth, and that people can understand each other.”

Spiegelman called the special connection he shares with Freund “a living bond” that goes beyond history. It has also helped him to honor his father’s legacy.

“Our shared experience gives voice to what my father couldn’t say,” said Spiegelman.

Here are our most popular posts of the past year:

• 10. The Social Worker Who Became An Accidental Icon (Dec. 21, 2015)

Lyn Kennedy Slater, PhD., a clinical associate professor at the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS), has long had an interest in fashion, but never expected that just a year after launching her fashion blog, Accidental Icon, she would top 21,000 followers on her Instagram account, make the cover of Grey magazine, and amass fans worldwide.

• 9. Health Scare Leads to Gabelli School Sophomore’s Charitable Sock Company (Sept. 19, 2016)

Makena Masterson, a sophomore marketing major at the Gabelli School of Business, is the creator and owner of SNOX, a company that sells non-slip, non-skid grip socks and donates 100 percent of profits to charity. The idea for SNOX came when at the age of 14 Masterson developed a four-inch blood clot in her arm, and vowed to give back to the hospital that treated her.

• 8. VIDEO: Mathilde Freund, Fordham’s Oldest Student, Turns 100 (Aug. 15, 2016)
  A student in the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, Holocaust survivor Freund celebrated her 100^th birthday in August. Our video, “The Enduring Wisdom of Mathilde Freund,” took off on Fordham’s social media sites, with more than 55,000 Facebook views.

• 7. Giving Back: The Cunniffes Make $20 Million Gift to Fordham (Oct. 14, 2016)

Maurice J. (Mo) Cunniffe, FCRH ’54, and Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe, Ph.D., GSAS ’71, took their philanthropy to an even higher level than their previous generosity, with a transformative $20 million gift that will be devoted to funding student financial aid.

• 6. From Pugsley’s to the Peace Corps: Joannah Caneda and Rob Gunther (May 26, 2016)

The Bronx’s Pugsley Pizza was responsible for one Fordham alumni couple’s romance, but it was Fordham’s Global Outreach trips—his to Tijuana, hers to Mississippi—that developed their desire to work for social justice. The couple went on to join the Peace Corps together and serve in Ecuador.

• 5. Fordham’s 175^th Class Greeted by Cheers on Joyous Opening Day (Aug. 29, 2016)

Fordham welcomed 2,192 members of the Class of 2020 this fall with added fanfare: the class arrived during the 175th-year celebration of Fordham’s history, dubbed the Dodransbicentennial year, and enjoyed a reenactment of founder Archbishop John Hughes’ greeting of the very first class.

• 4. Alumnus Vin Scully Awarded Medal of Freedom by President Obama (Nov. 22, 2016)

A legendary sports broadcaster and voice of the Dodgers for nearly seven decades, Scully, FCRH ’49, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Nov. 22 from President Barack Obama, who gave him a tribute that was by turns stirring and whimsical.

• 3. Denzel’s Glory Days: Golden Globe Winner Got His Start on a Fordham Stage (Jan. 12, 2016)

Fordham alumnus Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, who received a lifetime achievement award at the 2016 Golden Globes on Jan. 10, once played the title role in a Fordham Theatre production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones. “I bluffed my way into my first [college acting] job,” said the Oscar-winning actor and director.

• 2. VIDEO: Fordham University, Up Close and Personal (April 15, 2016)

You could say that, with more than 11,000 comments/shares and a million people reached, a minute-long drone video of our campuses proves that we all want to fly! Definitely, the soaring views of grass quads, treetops, building spires, and modern high-rise halls brought our Rams back home.

• 1. Father McShane Joins With University Presidents in Support of Undocumented Students (Dec. 1, 2016)

Outperforming other posts on both social media and our news site was Joseph M. McShane, S.J.’s statement that he’d joined with presidents at Jesuit, Catholic, and other universities to express support for undocumented students, calling them “valued and loved members of our community.” It was the most viewed story of 2016.

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