Frida Levenheck is a Holocaust survivor from France.  Born in the Alsace region, Frida was a child when the war began, and her survival can be attributed to her parents – and to luck and circumstance.  The family lived in the Strasbourg region, right across the Rhine River from Germany, and they were forcibly evacuated after the German blitzkrieg on France in 1940.  Frida’s parents headed inland, ending up in the Vichy zone, near Lot et Garonne.  Frida’s wartime childhood was relatively normal; the family was in hiding, but the people in their village did not turn them in, so Frida’s young years were not marked by the tragedies endured by so many French Jews.  At war’s end Frida was still a young girl; she made her way home with her parents, and several years later she met another French Holocaust survivor, Henri Levenheck, whose story can also be found here.

Both Frida and Henri were interviewed at Baycrest’s Cafe Europa in December 2018, by a delegation of Crestwood students that included Adam Bacik, Sarah Swartz, Lucy Cuthbertson, and Rylie Tishler.