Nonagenarian Charlotte Friedman shared her story of survival during the Holocaust in two silent videos that can be seen on Jewish.TV, the multimedia portal of the Judaism website Chabad.org. Unlike similar films documenting firsthand accounts of survival, Friedman’s story is told entirely in American Sign Language with English subtitles.

Born in 1920, Friedman grew up in Aachen, Germany, and was studying art and fashion in Berlin until kristalnacht in 1938. She and her parents tried to escape to Amsterdam by hiding their Jewish identities, but were captured and sent to an internment camp in Rotterdam, where Friedman helped a nurse care for patients.

“It was not like a concentration camp,” she relates. “It only detained people.”

The family eventually made it to Amsterdam, where Friedman’s parents befriended Anne Frank’s parents. When the Freidmans boarded a ship for America, Edith Frank reluctantly said that she would remain as her husband “didn’t believe [the Holocaust] could happen in Holland.”

“But somehow, it happened,” says Friedman.

Friedman, who today embraces her Judaism, considers herself “very lucky” to have survived, while other deaf people were tortured and killed.

The two-episode retelling comes as part of 47 other videos produced in American Sign Language by Jewish Deaf Multimedia and Rabbi Joshua Soudakoff in an effort to inspire and entertain members of the Jewish deaf community.

To watch A Deaf Survivor's Story, click here.