Peter Feigl (M / Germany, 1929), Holocaust survivor
Peter Feigl (M / Germany, 1929), Holocaust survivor
Biography
Peter Ernst Feigl was born on March 1, 1929 in Berlin, Germany, the only child of Ernst and Agnes Bornstein Feigl. The family moved to Prague, Czech Republic, where they stayed for one year before moving to Vienna, Austria in 1937; fleeing to Brussels, Belgium after the 1938 Anschluss. After his father was arrested he moved with his mother and sister to Paris, France but then traveling to Bordeaux because of the intense Paris bombings. They faced a short internment in Gurs due to his German nationality.
In summer 1942, the Vichy government, in collaboration with the Nazis, began rounding up Jews and deporting them to German concentration camps in Poland. On August 26, 1942, unbeknownst to Peter who was in a Quaker summer camp, his parents were arrested and deported to Auschwitz where they were killed within a month of their arrival. With the help of the Quakers, Peter was sent to the predominantly Protestant village of Le Chambon sur Lignon. In the area surrounding Le Chambon nearly 5,000 people seeking refuge, among whom 3,500 were Jews including many children, were sheltered. In the village, Peter was given false identity papers and sent as a boarding student to a high school in Figeac, France. From there, after escaping arrest in May 1944 when Germans raided Figeac, on May 20, 1944 Peter escaped to neutral Switzerland over barbed wire fences with the help of the Jewish underground.
In 1946, immigrating to the United States, where he became a successful businessman.