Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt –biographie

Erich Frey was born in Berlin on October 26, 1889. He held a managerial position at a Berlin bank and served as a soldier in the First World War. In 1916 he married Elsbeth Zerkowski; their daughters Liselott and Marie Anne were born in 1918 and 1922. Erich Frey was forced to retire from the bank in 1935, as a Jew, and went on to work for a property management company until 1940. His daughters managed to escape from Germany in 1939. Elsbeth and Erich Frey could not escape, since he was by then almost completely blind. In September 1940 Erich Frey began training as a brush binder with Otto Weidt.
In early March 1943, the Freys decided to go underground. They initially hid in a basement of Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind. They changed their location several times. In early April 1944, the Gestapo discovered their hiding place with friends, the Brauer family. The Freys were taken to the Theresienstadt ghetto on April 19, 1944, and on May 15, 1944 they and the Licht family were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Erich and Elsbeth Frey were murdered there.