Fred Strauss papers

Fritz (later Fred) Strauss (1926-2013) was born in Miehlen, Germany, the only child of Albert (?-1926) and Martha (or Marta) Strauss (nee Strauss, 1902-1943). Albert died while Fritz was an infant, and Martha moved them into her parents’ house. Fritz’s grandfather, Jakob, owned a kosher butcher shop on the first floor of their home and his grandmother, Trautchen (1867-1943), did the majority of the cooking. The small town had around 1,800 residents, including a dozen Jewish families and a synagogue. Once or twice a week, a Hebrew schoolteacher would come to teach Fritz and two other Jewish children in the community. During religious holidays, an uncle, aunt, and two cousins would visit from a nearby town.

After Hitler was appointed chancellor of the German government in January 1933, the German administration began issuing anti-Semitic decrees and regulations to isolate and restrict the everyday lives of the Jewish community. In 1935, the German authorities passed the Nuremberg Laws, which excluded people of Jewish ancestry from German citizenship and stripped them of their political rights, barred them from many professions, forbid marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and banned the kosher slaughter of animals. The growth of anti-Semitism in Miehlen meant that his grandfather’s butcher shop closed and the environment at the public school became unbearable for Fritz. In 1936, Fritz’s mother sent him to attend a Jewish school at the Israelitische Waisenanstalt, a large orphanage in Frankfurt. There were many other non-orphan children at the school, unable to stay in their small towns for school due to persecution. Within a few years, anti-Semitism in Frankfurt had grown, and during the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, all of the teachers at the orphanage were arrested. While Fritz was in Frankfurt, his mother remarried a man from Cologne, Albert Falkenstein, and his grandfather passed away.

On March 8, 1939, Fritz was one of ten children from the orphanage sent on a larger transport to Paris, France, organized by the orphanage. He and the other children who kept kosher spent a few weeks at the Rothschild Hospital so that they could have kosher meals. The children were then moved several times to different locations in the suburbs of Paris. The boys were temporarily separated from the girls and moved to École Maïmonide, an orthodox boys’ school, for about a month. They spent six weeks at Chateau Maubuisson in Oise, then a house in Montmorency. The French Jewish organization Œuvre de Secours aux Enfant (OSE, Child Rescue Work) helped the group settle at a house in Eaubonne, where 60 orthodox children stayed and attended school. At Eaubonne, the house director organized and directed various plays and skits, the children participated in arts and crafts classes, and held Shabbat every week. They organized a Heimrat (student council) to dole out discipline, and opened a synagogue. During this time, Fritz studied for his Bar Mitzvah, tutored by a good friend.

On September 3, 1939, following the German invasion of Poland, France and England declared war on Germany. In December, Martha and her husband, Albert, immigrated, via the Caribbean, to the United States. Martha and Albert settled in Easton, Pennsylvania, where she found work as a sewing machine operator. They secured an affidavit and papers for Fritz to join them, however, before Fritz could acquire the documents, the consulate in Paris moved to Bordeaux to avoid the advancing German forces. Not long after, Bordeaux also fell under German control, and Fritz was unable pick up his immigration papers. Fritz and his housemates joined groups from other OSE homes in the area on a transport and left the Paris region shortly before the city fell to German troops in June 1940.

The transport went to Limoges, in central France, and the group of about 150 children settled at Chateau Montintin, an old castle, bare of any furnishings. Fritz and the other Orthodox children lived in the servant’s home, called the Chevrette, so they could keep kosher and attend classes in Montintin. In May 1941, Fritz was part of three transports of children from Montintin to the American Consulate in Marseille. In June, over 100 children left Marseille on a transport organized and sponsored by the United States Committee for the Care of European Children (USCOM), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The children traveled through Spain to Lisbon, Portugal, and boarded the SS Mouzinho on June 10, 1941. They sailed to New York, and arrived on June 21, 1941.

Fritz was reunited with his mother and stepfather. Fritz lived with them in Easton, Pennsylvania, and began learning English and attending school again. His grandmother, Trautchen, stayed in Germany, and was deported in 1942, to Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia, where she died in 1943. His mother died of complications during an operation in early 1943, and Fritz left school for a job in silkscreen manufacturing. To avoid friction with his stepfather, Fritz moved to Washington Heights, New York, to live with his aunt and uncle. He found work at a glove factory, and attended school at night. In 1944, he joined the US Army and went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for basic training. As a non-citizen, however, he was not allowed to enter the tanks in which he was supposed to be training. After a couple months, a group of men was taken to the court in Louisville, sworn in as American citizens, and Fritz changed his name to Fred. Afterwards, Fred was allowed to complete his tank training. He transferred to California, and then served as part of the occupation forces in the Philippines and Korea. Following his discharge in 1946, he attended a trade school in New York and worked in dress pattern making and manufacturing. He met Sigrid Ansbacher (b. 1928), a fellow refugee and his future wife, at Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach while on an outing with friends. Sigrid had been deported to Theresienstadt, Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland, and Bergen-Belsen in Germany, where she was liberated by British forces on April 15, 1945. Fred and Sigrid married in September 1948, and had two children.