Fröhlich and Judas families papers

Harry Frohlich (1925-1997) was born Harald Fröhlich in Vienna, Austria, the son of Ignatz and Rosa (née Hutschnecker) Fröhlich. After the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, the Fröhlich family, after witnessing one of Ignatz's brothers being arrested and placed on a truck, decided to leave Austria immediately. The family travelled by train to the west, and when they determined they were likely in Switzerland, they exited the train and sought shelter there. They were initially taken to a prison, and then to a refugee camp in Buchberg/Schaffhausen. Harry celebrated his bar mitzvah there in December 1938, and attended school there, where he met Ingeborg Judas, who had escaped from Germany, and who he would eventually marry. After his schooling, he apprenticed to repair typewriters, which he did from 1946-1948, until he left for Israel, to train displaced persons in the vocational courses offered by ORT. Returning to Switzerland, he married Ingeborg Judas in 1951, and shortly thereafter they immigrated to the United States, settling in New York.

Inge Frohlich (1925-2006) was born Ingeborg Judas in 1925 in Ihringen, Germany, the daughter of Isaak and Selma Judas, who also had one other daughter, Gretel (born 1921). In November 1938, Selma Judas accompanied Gretel to Hamburg, as Gretel left Germany for the United States, and was in that city on Kristallnacht. Inge, who was in Ihringen, witnessed the destruction of the city's synagogue, and following this, the family was evicted from their home and forced to live with relatives in Freiburg. In 1939, prior to the outbreak of war, Inge was sent on a "Kindertransport" to Switzerland, living with a Jewish family in Schaffhausen, and serving as their maid. She attended school there, where she met her future husband, Harry Fröhlich, before leaving to work as a maid in Lausanne, and eventually returning to Schaffhausen. In 1946, she immigrated to the United States to live with her sister in New York, but returned to Switzerland in 1951 to marry Harry Fröhlich, following which he joined her in New York. She pursued a career as a dental hygienist, and the couple, who anglicized their last name to Froehlich, and later Frohlich, had one son, Royce (born 1955). Inge Frohlich died in Queens, New York, in 2006. Her parents, who had remained in Germany during World War II, were eventually deported to Auschwitz, where both were killed.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Royce Froehlich

Gift of Royce Froehlich, the son of Harry and Inge Frohlich, 2016.