Remembering Andy Friendly (1951–2026)

It is with heavy hearts that we share the news that our dear friend and fellow councilor, Andy Friendly, passed away on Sunday, January 4, at the age of 74.

To all who knew him, Andy was the true embodiment of his name. Few possessed a spirit as warm, open, and caring as his, and his unwavering commitment to the Institute's work over more than a decade of board service was a constant source of inspiration. For this reason, we eagerly invited him to serve as chair of our Board Development Committee—a role he graciously accepted over the summer.

Andy's professional impact was profound. He produced the first season of Entertainment Tonight, held executive roles at CNBC, and served as President of Programming and Production at King World Productions. Yet he always found ways to give back—serving as President of the Hollywood Radio & Television Society, serving on the board of the Saban Community Clinic, and teaching at and establishing a scholarship for his alma mater, the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Above all, Andy was a devoted friend and a loving husband to his remarkable wife, Pat Crowley, who passed away this past September.

In 2015, Andy joined the USC Shoah Foundation through his friendship with former Board of Councilors member David Zaslav. While he was already familiar with our mission, a visit to our offices ignited his passion for our cause. He saw the Institute’s work as the ultimate extension of his own vision for a more civil future, often saying, “I can’t imagine any cause or issue that’s more important than keeping alive the memory and the history of the survivors of the Holocaust.” He championed this belief throughout his life, most notably in his engaging 2017 memoir, Willing to Be Lucky, and through his efforts to build a community of stakeholders deeply invested in our work.

Andy's dedication to preserving Holocaust history included a deeply personal focus on the legacies of liberators. His father, Fred Friendly, known to many for his storied years at CBS News, was a U.S. Army sergeant present at the liberation of the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945. What Fred Friendly witnessed there shattered his worldview and inspired a poignant letter that became a cornerstone of the Friendly family. Reading his account aloud each Yom Kippur became a sacred family tradition. This legacy sparked Andy Friendly’s lifelong devotion to Holocaust remembrance.

Andy Friendly is survived by his siblings David, Lisa, Richard Mark, Michael Mark, John Mark, and Ruth Friendly, as well as many beloved grandchildren, nieces, and nephews.

His spirit will live on in our hearts and through the vital work of this Institute. He was a storyteller who understood that some stories are too important to be forgotten.

May his memory be a blessing.

─────────

Fred Friendly’s Mauthausen letter

Paris, France

May 10, 1945

Dear Mother,

In just a few days, I will be in an airplane on my way back to the APO to which you write me. Before I leave Europe, I must write this letter and attempt to convey to you that which I saw, felt, and gasped at as I saw a war and a frightened peace stagger into a perilous existence. I have seen a dead Germany. If it is not dead it is certainly ruptured beyond repair. I have seen the beer hall where the era of the inferno and hate began and as I stood there in the damp moist hall where Nazidom was spawned, I heard only the dripping of a bullet-pierced beer barrel and the ticking of a clock which had already run out the time of the bastard who made the Munich beer hall a landmark. I saw the retching vomiting of the stone and mortar which had once been listed on maps as Nurnheim, Regensberg, Munich, Frankfurt, Augusburg, Lintz, and wondered how a civilization could ever again spring from cities so utterly removed from the face of the earth by weapons the enemy taught us to use at Coventry and Canterbury. I have met the German, have examined the storm trooper, his wife and his heritage of hate, and I have learned to hate - almost with as much fury as the G.I. who saw his buddy killed at the Bulge, almost as much as the Pole from Bridgeport who lost 100 pounds at Mauthausen, Austria. I have learned now and only now that this war had to be fought. I wish I might have done more. I envy with a bottomless spirit the American soldier who may tell his grandchildren that with his hands he killed Germans.

That which is in my heart now I want you and those dear to us know and yet I find myself completely incapable of putting it into letter form. I think if I could sit down in our living room or the den at 11 President, I might be able to convey a portion of the dismal, horrible and yet titanic mural which is Europe today. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do that for months or maybe a year, and by then the passing of time may dim the memory. Some of the senses will live just so long as I do - some of the sounds, like the dripping beer, like the firing of a Russian tommy gun, will always bring back the thought of something I may try to forget, but never will be able to do.

For example, when I go to the Boston Symphony, when I hear waves of applause, no matter what the music is, I shall be traveling back to a town near Lintz where I heard applause unequalled in history, and where I was allowed to see the ordeal which our fellow brothers and sisters of the human race have endured. To me Poland is no longer the place where Chopin composed, or where a radio station held out for three weeks - to me Poland is a place from which the prisoners of Mauthausen came. When I think of the Czechs, I will think of those who were butchered here, and that goes for the Jews, the Russians, Austrians, the people of 15 different lands, - yes, even the Germans who passed through this Willow Run of death. This was Mauthausen. I want you to remember the word... I want you to know, I want you to never forget or let our disbelieving friends forget, that your flesh and blood saw this. This was no movie. No printed page. Your son saw this with his own eyes and in doing this aged 10 years.

Mauthausen was built with a half-million rocks which 150,000 prisoners - 18,000 was the capacity - carried up on their backs from a quarry 800 feet below. They carried it up steps so steep that a Captain and I walked it once and were winded, without a load. They carried granite and made 8 trips a day... and if they stumbled, the S.S. men pushed them into the quarry. There are 285 steps, covered with blood. They called it the steps of death. I saw the shower room (twice or three times the size of our bathroom), a chamber lined with tile and topped with sprinklers where 150 prisoners at a time were disrobed and ordered in for a shower which never gushed forth from the sprinklers because the chemical was gas. When they ran out of gas, they merely sucked all of the air out of the room. I talked to the Jews who worked in the crematory, one room adjacent, where six and seven bodies at a time were burned. They gave these jobs to the Jews because they all died anyhow, and they didn’t want the rest of the prisoners to know their own fate. The Jews knew theirs, you see.

And how does the applause fit in? Mother, I walked through countless cell blocks filled with sick, dying people - 300 in a room twice the size of our living room as as we walked in - there was a ripple of applause and then an inspiring burst of applause and cheers, and men who could not stand up sat and whispered - though they tried to shout it - Vive L’Americansky... Vive L’Americansky... the applause, the cheers, those faces of men with legs the size and shape of rope, with ulcerated bodies, weeping with a kind of joy you and I will never, I hope, know. Vive L’Americansky... I got a cousin in Milwaukee... We thought you guys would come... Vive L’Americansky... Applause... gaunt, hopeless faces at last filled with hope. One younger man asked something in Polish which I could not understand but I did detect the word “Yit”... I asked an interpreter what he said - The interpreter blushed and finally said, “He wants to know if you are a Jew.” When I smiled and stuck out my mitt and said “yes”... he was unable to speak or show the feeling that was in his heart. As I walked away, I suddenly realized that this had been the first time I had shaken hands with my right hand. That, my dear, was Mauthausen.

I will write more letter in days to come. I want to write one on the Russians. I want to write and tell you how I sat next to Patton and Tolbukhin at a banquet at the Castle of Franz Josef. I want to write and tell you how the Germans look in defeat, how Munich looked in death, but those things sparkle with excitement and make good reading. This is my Mauthausen letter. I hope you will see fit to let Bill Braude and the folks read it. I would like to think that all the Wachenheimers and all the Friendlys and all our good Providence friends would read it. Then I want you to put it away and every Yom Kippur I want you to take it out and make your grandchildren read it.

For, if there had been no America, we, all of us, might well have carried granite at Mauthausen.

All my love, 

F.F.