by Humans Are Free Staff
Fred Schwab was born in Frankfurt. In 1935, he managed to leave Germany. His wife, Marianne Rothschild, came from the town of Bad Homburg. After the 1938 Pogroms, she fled to the USA via Britain. The couple visited their former country as guests of the City of Frankfurt, to which they kept close emotional ties. Both returned often, met former classmates and spoke at schools.
Klaus Schwab’s family tree, on his mother’s side
Their daughter Madeleine was invited by the City of Bad Homburg in 2013. She attended the opening ceremony for a deportation memorial in her mother’s home town. From here, her grandparents had been deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942.
Fred Schwab: “We Need To Look Ahead”
Fred Schwab was born as Friedrich Ernst Schwab into a Jewish family with a centuries-old history in Germany and Frankfurt.
Born into this metropolitan city in 1918, he grew up at Rheinstraße 7 in Frankfurt’s Westend district and visited the nearby Goethe-Gymnasium. Fred’s father owned a large business at Moselstraße 4 (Gebr. Feisenberger. Kurzwaren, Spielwaren, Strumpfwaren).
The family was firmly established among Frankfurt’s society. His parents married at the traditional Frankfurter Hof hotel, together with Christian and Jewish friends. The family was not very religious and attended the liberal Westend Synagogue. They celebrated “Weihnukka”: Hanukkah as well as Christmas (“Weihnachten” in German).
When Hitler was installed…
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