Born on March 22, 1873 in Gailingen
Deported to the Ghetto Theresienstadt concentration camp in August 1942
Interned in Weißenstein in February 1942
Died in New York on April 8, 1959
The name of Frieda’s birth family is well known, even celebrities come from one of the Guggenheim families from Gailingen on Lake Constance.
Just 20 years old, Frieda married the merchant Jeditjah Weil from Sulzburg in Baden, who was almost 12 years her senior. After the marriage, the young family lived in Mühlhausen in Alsace, where their sons Marcel and Siegfried were born in 1893 and 1894. Siegfried died as a German soldier in the First World War and after the end of the war the family left Mühlhausen/Mulhouse, which had become French, and moved to Stuttgart.
Frieda became a widow in 1931, but must have been well provided for. The Nazi dictatorship began to plunder the family. Marcel Weil moved to the USA as early as 1937. After Frieda was forced to sell her house in Stuttgart, she tried to flee to her son. The start of the war thwarted her escape and in February 1942 Frieda Weil was sent to a forced residence in Weißenstein.
She only stayed there for a few months; in August of that year, she was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp. With great luck, the over 70-year-old survived the misery and was one of the few who were ransomed by Switzerland in February 1945. She was finally able to leave for the USA and see her grandchildren again. Frieda Weil died in New York on April 8, 1959.
(12.07.2023 kmr/ww)
