personal data


Ehrlich Felix (Phil)

Surname
Ehrlich
First Name
Felix (Phil)
Date of Birth
04-02-1919
Place of birth
Bad Kissingen
Other family members

Parents: Ludwig and Margarete (Grete) Ehrlich née Efrem
Siblings: Suse and Hans Josef
Spouse: Pearl née Kalb
Children:

Address

Ludwigstraße 17 (now 10)

Profession
Emigration/Deportation

March 1939 emigrated to England - later Kanada

Date of death
02-12-2019
Place of death
Thornmills on Steeles, Kanada

biography


Felix Ehrlich was born in Bad Kissingen on April 2, 1919 as the second child of Ludwig and Margarete Ehrlich. His father was the co-owner of the renowned fashion shop in Ludwigstrasse and thus Felix experienced a beautiful and carefree childhood with his siblings and cousins who all lived in the spacious house at the corner of Ludwigstrasse and Kurhausstrasse. Felix entered Kissingen Realschule in April 1929 but had to leave it in the school year of 1934/35. His teachers characterize him as “strong and skillful”, “gifted”, and “amiable and good-natured”, with a certain fondness of chattering. 

As it became impossible for him to continue his education in Germany because of Nazi repressions, his parents first sent him to Reading/ England. In 1936, he returned to Germany where he studied electrical engineering in Chemnitz and worked, before he moved to Berlin in 1938. In March 1939, Felix Ehrlich left Germany for good and emigrated to England where he adopted the name Phil. As a German, he was taken to an internment camp in Quebec after the beginning of the war, from where his Uncle Gustav who had emigrated to Canada in the early 1930s had him released and assumed responsibility for him. He provided for a place of living for him and a room where he repaired gadgets and could develop his technical and business skills. Phil was successful, found his bearings in his job and in his private life, started a family with Pearl Kalb, and stayed in Canada forever. (See Joske Ereli, p. 63f.)

Felix Ehrlich died in February 2019 in Thornmills on Steeles in Canada at the age of nearly 100 years.


(Information mostly taken from the autobiography of his brother Joske Ereli.)

76_Felix Ehrlich mit seinen Geschwistern Hans Josef und Suse
Felix Ehrlich with his siblings Hans Josef and Suse
 

76_Felix Ehrlich (rechts) mit Eltern und Bruder
Felix Ehrlich (on the right) with parents and brother
76_Felix Ehrlich (Mitte) unbeschwerte Kindheit am Meer mit Geschwistern und Freundinnen
Felix Ehrlich (middle) carefree childhood by the sea with siblings and friends

   

Ehrlich-familientreffen-2000
Family meeting of the Ehrlich family in the summer of 2001 in Bad Kissingen - in front of the former "Ehrlich fashion house" on Ludwigstrasse, Phil (Felix) Ehrlich on the far left


References


Joske Ereli, Von Hampi Ehrlich zu Jossl Ereli- Meine Lebensgeschichte
Hans Jürgen Beck, Kissingen war unsere Heimat, Stand April 2017, S. 586 - 599
Schülerakte des Jack-Steinberger-Gymnasium
US Holocaust Memorial Museum/ Holocaust Survivors…externer Link
The Globe and Mail, Obituariesexterner Link

Photo credits


© Joske Ereli, Ein Gedi



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