Frieda Soury
Frieda Soury was born in 1929 in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). She had a happy childhood with her family, and loved holidays and spending time outdoors. Frieda’s father was Jewish, but her mother was not. Frieda said later, “I grew up celebrating Passover and Christmas. I knew I was Jewish, but religion was not a central part of my life. When Germany invaded Czechoslovakia [in 1939], my religion came to define me.” After the occupation began, Jewish students were no longer allowed to attend public schools. Frieda, along with all Jewish students, attended a separate school and was forced to wear a yellow star on her clothing.
In 1943, at the age of 14, Frieda was deported to the concentration camp Theresienstadt (Terezin in Czech). Frieda was designated a mischling, meaning half-Jewish, and she was assigned to stay in a room with more than 20 other girls. She remembers that the Jewish girls in her room came and went (later she learned they were deported to Auschwitz or other camps) while she and the other mischling girls remained. Frieda worked on the camp’s farm, planting, tilling, harvesting, and moving rocks. While it was back-breaking labor, this afforded her the opportunity to occasionally steal an extra piece of food. Of the 140,000 people sent to Theresienstadt, 15,000 were children, and only 1,500 of these children — including Frieda — survived the war.
Theresienstadt was liberated by the Soviet Army in May 1945. Frieda’s father managed to acquire transportation for his family back to Ostrava. Upon returning home, Frieda found that she was the only survivor out of her group of former classmates. Other Ostrava survivors often had nothing left: no photos or mementos. Since Frieda managed to save this class photo, she cut out the faces of several children who were killed in the Holocaust, and gave them to their relatives and loved ones.
When she was 18, Frieda immigrated to Israel, where she met her husband Aaron. They had three children and then came to the United States. Frieda lived in California, and then Seattle for many years, and shared her story as a member of the Holocaust Center’s Speakers Bureau for years. Frieda passed away in 2022.
