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.)