Oral History Interview with Henry Froehlich

Henry Froehlich (formerly Hans Arnold Froehlich), born in 1922 in Rottweil, Germany, describes how in 1935, the Nazi boycott forced his father to close his shoe store; having to leave school and the family moved to Stuttgart; how the family’s life changed; Kristallnacht and his efforts to warn Jews to flee and how he avoided arrest; his father’s arrest and imprisonment in Dachau; his father being killed in Dachau after one month; the family paying 500 Marks to claim his father’s body; working for the Oberrat (the Jewish community office in Stuttgart that processed immigration) for two years; his activities and contacts with the American Consulate, Gestapo, and S.D. (Sicherheitsdienst German Security Service); immigrating with his younger brother and mother to the US in 1940; how his older brother, who was crippled since birth, had been placed in a Catholic home for crippled children and there is some evidence he was killed in a Nazi euthanasia program; working in a CCC program in Berlin, NH until he was suspected of being a German spy; reuniting with his family in Philadelphia, PA; getting married and having two children; and becoming a successful businessman.

Date: 08/23/1997
Interviewer: Liesl J. Loeb
Interviewee: Henry Froehlich
Language: English
Subject: Anti-Jewish boycotts--Germany.
Holocaust survivors.
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Germany--Personal narratives.
Jews, German--United States.
Jews--Germany--Rottweil.
Kristallnacht, 1938.
People with disabilities--Nazi persecution--Germany.
World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Germany.
World War, 1939-1945--German Americans.
World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons, German.
World War, 1939-1945--War work--Germany.
World War, 1939-1945--War work--United States.
Men--Personal narratives.
Location: Rottweil, Germany
Stuttgart, Germany
Italy
USA
Permalink: https://hoha.digitalcollections.gratzcollege.edu/item/oral-history-interview-with-henry-froehlich/