Lodz ghetto scrip, 50 mark note

Philip Freid was born May 7, 1928, in Lodz, Poland. His parents were Hersh (July 26, 1890-August 20, 1942) and Ita (nee Ogniewicz, 1890-1944). The parents operated a poultry store. The family was Jewish and Philip studied Hebrew and Polish at the Edelstein private school in Lodz. He had two older siblings, a brother, Leon (May 8, 1946-January 3, 2003), who served in the Polish Army in 1939, and a sister, Bronka (1922-1945). In 1939, the Germans occupied Lodz. Philip and his family were interned in the Lodz ghetto. His father worked collecting garbage; his mother cleaned and prepared food in a ghetto kitchen. On August 20, 1942, his father died of starvation. In 1944, the rest of the family was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. Philip and his brother, Leon, were separated from their mother and sister. Their mother was selected to be killed in the gas chambers on the day the family arrived. Bronka worked in a German-run factory, as she had during the years in the ghetto. She was transferred to Stutthof concentration camp, where she was killed in January 1945. Leon would be in Auschwitz nearly a year before being transferred to Flossenburg and Siegmar-Schonau work camp. After eight weeks, Philip was transferred to Flossenburg concentration camp in Germany, and then to the Siegmar-Schonau forced labor camp, a satellite of Flossenburg. He worked in a Waffen-SS factory making bombs. Toward the end of the war, in 1945, he was taken on a death march east to Luditz (Zlutice) in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. He was liberated there on May 7, 1945, when the guards abandoned the inmates; both American and Russian troops were operating in the area. Two days later, he set out for Lodz to search for surviving relatives. In September, he left Lodz and was smuggled from Stettin (Szczecin), Poland, into Munich, Germany, by the Bricha operation, which transferred Jews to points in Europe where they could eventually be brought to Palestine. He stayed briefly at a displaced persons camp in Munich, and then went to the Schlactlensee displaced persons camp in Berlin, where he was reunited with his brother, Leon. Philip attened the Herzl school, joined a Zionist organization, and worked in the camp post office. In 1949, the brothers emigrated to the United States, where they had an uncle. Philip served in the U.S. Army from 1950-1951, in Fort Benning, Georgia, and in Germany.