Philipp Zarnowitzki was born in Auschwitz/ Oświęcim on July 2, 1900 as the second child of Hermann Zarnowitzki and his wife Berta. Soon after his birth, his parents decided to leave the poor and depressing conditions in their home region and look for better living conditions in the West. In December 1902, the family moved from Würzburg into Weingasse in Bad Kissingen. Here, Philipp’s younger sister Jetty (Jeanette) was born in 1903. The family lived in Bad Kissingen for only a short time. In February 1904, they already left the Franconian spa town and moved to Nuremberg. Their further places of residence can often only be deduced on the basis of the birth certificates of the following children.

The stay in Nuremberg can’t have been really long, as Philipp’s sister Anna was already born in Ludwigshafen in June 1905. Rosa, the next daughter, was born in Fürth in 1909 and Lenchen, the youngest child, was born in Ludwigshafen again. Maybe the unsteady life of the family also has got to do with Hermann Zarnowitzkis profession as in the meantime he is registered as “travelling salesman” in the files. Philipp must – like his father - also have lived in Rohrbach for some time (not clear which Rohrbach is meant!) because he moved to Gailingen from there in January 1919 (Information obtained from Joachim Klose, Jüdisches Museum Gailingen, Mail from August 26, 2018). The little town “am Hochrhein” (on the High Rhine) with a long Jewish tradition became the centre of life of the family for the next two decades. Since the beginning of the year, Philipp’s parents and his sister Lenchen also lived there. The family lived in a house with two entrances in Bergstrasse 15 directly opposite the Catholic church. Philipp had been living in Gailingen since August 1919 and worked there till his emigration to Palestine in 1933 as a gardener (presumably in the Jewish Old People’s Home “Friedrichsheim”) (Ibid.). He died in Palestine in 1956 (Homepage “Survivor Story”).

Only Rosa and Lenchen survived of his siblings. They could emigrate to London in 1939. The rest of the siblings, Josephine, Jetty and Anna were deported just like their parents and murdered.