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Fritzi Zbik, Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 99
OB ITUARY
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
and educator Fritzi Zbik died
on April 20 at the age of 99.

Her friends and family
members remember her as
a devoted homemaker and
matriarch who loved to cook
and garden.

“She was just such a loving,
loving woman. She didn’t
care about the excesses in
life,” daughter Hanna Zbik
said. “Her family always came
No. 1.”
The Northeast Philadelphia
resident was born in Rona de
Sus, Romania in 1921. She
was the 10th of Malka and
In Kaufering, she met
Benjamin Zbik, a widower
whose wife and daughter had
been killed in Auschwitz. He
worked in the kitchens, got her
a job serving food and helped
the sisters survive.

In their statement, her
family said the three prisoners
became friends with 13 other
Jewish prisoners with whom
they eventually plotted an
escape. She became especially
close with one of the other
young women, Susan
Pereszlenyi. In 1945, the group began
to notice the Nazi guards
dressing in civilian clothes
due to fear of United States
soldiers. Benjamin Zbik found
out they had started executing
Philadelphia. The family
lived on Bainbridge Street
and owned a stable that
rented horses and wagons to
merchants. When automobiles
became widely used, Benjamin
Zbik worked at a butcher shop.

Edith Jeger married Benjamin
Zbik’s brother, Ruben, and the
family members lived close to
each other.

As a child, Hanna Zbik
listened to her parents tell
stories about what they experi-
enced during the war.

“I asked myself, ‘Could I
have done that if I had lived
through that?’ The answer is
no, and it just magnifies my
thoughts as to how strong my
mother really was,” she said.

Zbik’s family said several of
Fritzi Zbik with her great-grandchildren, Jonah and Madison.

I asked myself, ‘Could I have done that if I had lived through that?’
The answer is no, and it just magnifies my thoughts as to how strong my
mother really was.”
HANNA ZBIK
Avraham Yisrael Jeger’s 12
children. According to a state-
ment from her family, she had
a religious upbringing. Her
parents owned a kosher stove
that their neighbors would
use to bake matzah during
Passover. When war broke out in
Europe, she and her sister
Edith Jeger worked in a restau-
rant for one of their cousins in
Hungary. They were confined to
the Budapest Ghetto and later
forced to march north across the
Danube River. They were then
put on cattle cars and shipped
to Kaufering, a subcamp of
Dachau. Many did not survive
the journey, and Zbik’s sister
became extremely ill.

6 MAY 13, 2021
prisoners to try to cover their
tracks, and the group decided
to flee in late April. A few days
later, on May 1, they found U.S.

soldiers and knew they were
liberated. Fritzi and Benjamin Zbik
were married shortly after the
war and had their only child
in a displaced persons camp.

They set about trying to find
lost family members, and Fritzi
Zbik learned that her parents
and two of her brothers had
been killed, but several other
siblings were alive and had
moved to Israel, Canada or the
United States.

The Zbiks immigrated
to the U.S. through Detroit
in 1949 and then moved to
the other 16 Jewish prisoners
who escaped from Kaufering
together ended up settling
in the Philadelphia area and
raising families. A few years
after the Zbiks moved to
Philadelphia, Pereszlenyi also
immigrated here. When she
found her friend’s address
and paid her a surprise visit,
Zbik fainted.

The two women and
their families were insep-
arable, and they spent years
going shopping, cooking and
celebrating Jewish holidays
together. Zbik’s daughter and
grandchildren called her friend
“tante,” the Yiddish word
for aunt.

“We used to get together,
JEWISH EXPONENT
Fritzi and Benjamin Zbik in 1949
Courtesy of Hanna Zbik
most of the time on Saturday
evenings when Shabbos went
out. She was very, very friendly
to everybody,” Pereszlenyi said.

Zbik lived to have grandchil-
dren and great-grandchildren.

She was a member of the
New Americans Association
and the Holocaust Survivors
Association and spoke about
her experiences during the
Holocaust at many synagogues,
schools and community
centers. According to her
family, she was passionate
about giving tzedakah and
supported charities including
Israel Bonds, Jewish National
Fund and the Firefighters
Association. “She was pure of heart, she
was naturally good and we
loved her so much,” her family
said in their statement. “She
didn’t have any hate in her
heart. This is a woman who lost
her parents and her brothers.

She just moved forward, and
she lived.” l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM