Dr. Nechuma (Natalie) Friedländer (1888–1942)
1st cousin 2X removed. Dermatologist, Holocaust Victim
Dr. Nechuma Friedländer, also known as Natalie, was born on 18 July 1888 in Boryslaw, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now located in Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. She was the daughter of Amalia Mamcze Rothenberg and Berl Joel (Dov) Friedländer, a Jewish couple who raised a large family rooted in Galician Jewish tradition. Her mother, Amalia, came from the extended Rothenberg line - a family marked by deep ties to Jewish religious life, learning, and resilience. Her father, Berl Joel, was 32 at the time of her birth; Amalia was 28.
Nechuma grew up in a vibrant, multilingual, and multicultural environment, likely speaking Yiddish at home, German in her studies, and Polish in public life. She would have come of age during a period of social transformation and growing antisemitism in Galicia, but she pursued a professional path rarely accessible to women - let alone Jewish women, at the turn of the century.
Against these odds, Nechuma became a medical doctor, specializing in dermatology. Her attainment of a doctoral degree signals both her academic excellence and her family's commitment to education. She lived and worked in Drohobycz (modern-day Drohobych, Ukraine), a town known for its oil industry, Jewish cultural life, and interethnic tensions that worsened during the 1930s.
Nechuma never married and had no known children. She shared her life with her siblings, including Bibcia Albina (b. 1894), Matilda (b. 1894), and Pepa (b. 1902), who were also born in Drohobycz. All three sisters are believed to have perished in the Holocaust.
By 1942, as Nazi occupation tightened its grip on Drohobycz, Nechuma was recorded as living at Strypoko 12, unmarried and still practicing as a dermatologist. She was 54 years old. Medical documentation and wartime lists indicate she remained in the city during the height of Jewish persecution. Drohobycz was part of the Lwów District of the General Government, where mass deportations, executions, and the liquidation of ghettos formed part of the genocidal policies of the Third Reich.
Nechuma, like countless others, vanished into the abyss of the Shoah. Her name survives on a list of persecuted persons, preserved through the work of archives and remembrance institutions. Her life - as a physician, a daughter, and a woman who defied the constraints of her time - ended in silence, yet her memory lives on in the records, in family history, and in this act of remembrance.
Amalia Mamcze Rothenberg Rutenberg (1860–1944)
My Great-Grand Aunt & (Natalie) Friedländer’s mother
Born: 1860, Hyrawka (Drohobyczka), Podkarpackie, Poland
Died: c. 1944, murdered during the Holocaust
Married: Berl Joel (Dov) Friedländer
Children: Nine children, born between 1879 and 1902
Amalia Mamcze Rothenberg Rutenberg was born in 1860 in the village of Hyrawka, part of the Drohobyczka district in what is now Podkarpackie, Poland. She was the eldest daughter of Zindel (Sindel/Juda) Rothenberg, a brewer, and Rozalia (Rywa/Riva/Roza) Zuckerberg, who had married young - Zindel was just 20, Rozalia only 18 at the time of Amalia’s birth. Her family came from a long line of Galician Jews, rooted in the towns and villages of Drohobycz, Skole, and the surrounding areas.
Amalia grew up in a household that expanded rapidly; her siblings included Mechel Wolf (b.1861), Leiser Leo (b.1864), my great-grandfather Pinkas/Pawel (b.1868), Krancie/Krenicia (b.1876), and Chaje (b.1879). The family moved around the region, including time spent living in Raniowice and Drohobycz, mirroring the migratory nature of many Jewish families seeking opportunity and safety in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
By the age of 19, Amalia had given birth to her first child, Mendel Friedländer, in Drohobych (1879). Over the next two decades, she and her husband, Berl Joel (Dov) Friedländer, an accountant originally from Drohobycz, would have at least nine children. Their home address—repeatedly listed as House 38 in Drohobycz or Boryslaw—served as a locus for this growing family.
Her known children included:
Mendel Friedländer (1879–1944)
Ryze Friedländer (b.1880)
Debore Friedländer (1882–1884)
Aron Hersch Friedländer (1885–1887)
Lieba Friedländer (b.1886), later Goldstein
Dr. Nechuma/Natalie Friedländer (1888–1942), a physician who was murdered during the Holocaust
Bibcia Albina Friedländer (1894–1944)
Matilda Friedländer (1894–1944)
Pepa Friedländer (1902–1944)
Amalia’s life spanned monumental shifts in Jewish life in Galicia—under Austrian rule, through World War I, the interwar years under Polish governance, and finally the catastrophe of World War II. Despite being religious minorities in a region often marked by antisemitism and economic instability, the Rothenbergs and Friedländers were industrious and educated. Several of Amalia’s children went on to receive higher education or professional training, including in medicine and commerce.
The family endured profound losses. Amalia buried several children in infancy, and by the early 1940s, the spread of Nazi occupation into Eastern Galicia brought further tragedy. Her daughter, Dr. Nechuma Friedländer, perished in 1942 during the Holocaust, and Pepa, Bibcia Albina, and Matilda were all likely murdered around 1944. Amalia herself is believed to have died that same year, at the age of 84 - possibly in the final waves of deportations or mass shootings of the Jewish population in Drohobycz, Boryslaw, or Skole.
Her legacy lives on through the fragments that remain - names in birth records, addresses on marriage certificates, the occasional reference in deportation lists or postwar testimonies. Through her children and siblings, Amalia is connected to a broad network of Rothenberg descendants across Galicia, Vienna, and beyond.