From Barbed Wire to Picket Fence: A Child Holocaust Survivor’S Dreams and Adaptability

By Teresa Fischlowitz

In the story of her life, Teresa Fischlowitz shares how she spent her seventh birthday on a train to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp; her familys rescue from that camp several months later; and the familys travel as refugees from Switzerland to Prague to Paris to Caracas, and finally to the United States.

Teresa went to seventeen schools in six languages on three continents by the time she graduated high school in Los Angeles.

After a brief career as an opera singer in New York Teresa taught elementary school for over 30 years in Los Angeles. In her retirement in San Diego she is an avid supporter of opera and classical music.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491863633

Book preview

2014 Teresa Fischlowitz. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/24/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-6394-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-6364-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-6363-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014902857

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Photo 1

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

Photo 2 through 10

CHAPTER 1, 1937-1945

Photos 11 through 18

CHAPTER 2, 1945-1951

Photos 19 through 24

CHAPTER 3, 1951-1955

CHAPTER 4, 1956-1963

Photos 25 through 29

CHAPTER 5, 1963-1968

CHAPTER 6, 1969-1979

CHAPTER 7, 1980-1985

Photos 30 through 33

CHAPTER 8, 1985 to the Present

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Photo%20%231..jpg

1. From Generation to Generation

Teresa, with granddaughter,

Summer Rose Fischlowitz, age 11, 2013.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to

•   My parents: My father Erich Racz, whose worldly wisdom and endurance made possible my survival, and the survival of many others in our family; my mother Irene Ilcovics Racz, whose constant adaptability and loving patience with those in her care was a model for all who knew her;

•   The millions, Jews and others, lost in World War II and the Holocaust;

•   Teachers and friends who cared for me and supported me during the many changing parts of my life; and

•   The descendants of Irene and Erich Racz: Richard Fischlowitz, Robert Fischlowitz, Michael Tiffany, Maryanne Tiffany Reimer, Kathleen Reimer, Matthew Reimer, and especially my granddaughter Summer Rose Fischlowitz; so that they and all who come after them may know that our family’s survival is part of the history of humanity.

PROLOGUE

1923-1937

In the Spring of 1923 my father, Erich Rosenberg, left his home in Berlin, the capital city of the new Weimar Republic of Germany, and went in his Packard Phaeton to his family home in Presov in the new nation of Czechoslovakia. While visiting his parents and his mother’s family home {Photo #2} he saw his cousin, Irene Ilkovics, and asked her to marry him. She said yes. Irene was 13 years younger than Erich, and was pleased to marry a successful businessman. Marriages between close cousins were not unusual in their time and culture.

One year later, in 1924, after Irene had time to build a trousseau, Erich returned. They were married on June 11, 1924 in the Ilkovics family home in Presov, Czechoslovakia. {Photo #3} They left there for Berlin in two chauffer-driven cars, including a Packard Phaeton, {Photo #4} bringing all of Irene’s personal belongings and two servants, a personal maid for Irene and a kosher cook. My parents moved into Erich’s penthouse apartment in Neuekantstrasse, overlooking the Lietzensee, a beautiful area of Berlin. The French Louis XV furnishings of their apartment were in the style popular in the early 20th century. They lived a life typical of the upper class of the time. {Photos #5, 6, & 7} Within a year the kosher cook was no longer needed, as their social circle, including bankers, businessmen, and film producers, was not exclusively Jewish.

*     *     *

In 1953, at age 15, I was working in the Los Angeles laundromat my mother owned, that my father had purchased for her, before he died. {Photos #8 & 9} What happened between 1924 and 1953? That is the rest of this story including my family’s survival during World War II, our post-war travels seeking asylum, and my career and marriages.

As I write about the turbulent first three decades of my parents’ marriage, from the perspective of sixty years after my father’s death, I want to share the story of my family, my life full of changing cultures, changing languages,