Upstander Profile-Petr Feigl

Name: Peter Feigl

DOB: March 1^st, 1929

Age: 81

Klaus Peter Feigl was born on March 1^st, 1929 in Berlin, Germany. He was the only child. According to Peter, “When I was 4 years old, my parents took me to the circus, and I saw clowns and clowns and Klaus sounded alike. I did not like the clowns, so I didn’t want to be called Klaus anymore.” So, from then on, he would be known as Peter. Peter’s parents baptized him as a Catholic when he was 8 years old. They wanted to try to protect him the Anti-Jewish decrees or worse, be deported to a death camp. But, in the eyes of the Nazis, the Feigl’s were still considered Jewish. The Feigl family quickly fled to Belgium and then to Austria. When the family felt that their son’s life was being threatened, the family sent him off to a group that was run by the American Quakers that found hiding places for Jewish children. On the day of his parent’s arrest, was the day that he started his first diary. Peter was then sent to a place called Le-Chambon where lots of Jewish children were sheltered. Peter’s diary seemed like letters to his parents, who he missed dearly. The very first entry he wrote was, “This diary is written for my parents and hope that it will reach them both.” He pasted a photograph of his parents inside. He received a couple of post-cards, and then his parent’s post-cards came to a sudden halt. Peter wondered why he had not heard from his parents. Peter managed to evade deportations for almost three years. When Peter was only 16, he and a few other children managed to flee to Switzerland. He left his first diary behind, as a way of protecting his identity. But, he began a second diary, which he carried with him in a back-pack. He described the event in the second diary and when they finally crossed the border illegally, Feigl recalled, “That night I sleep soundly in a free country”. In 1946, Feigl took a ship that headed to the States. Luckily, his maternal grandmother and aunt were already in the States and welcomed him with open arms. By this time, Feigl was 17 years of age. He later would find out that his parents did not survive the Shoah; they had been slaughtered in the killing centers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. According to Feigl in an interview, he recalled that his grandmother still treated him like a child. He recalled, “I still had a curfew, since my grandmother did not want me being with girls or dating yet”. But, Peter managed to join the Air force. He met his wife, Lennie, and they had four daughters and a grandfather of two grandsons. Coincidently, he was re-united with his first diary. Someone had found it in France and published it. When he received the original diary, he decided to donate both of his diaries and the fifty-eight photographs that he took at Le-Chambon to the USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) in 1990. Today, he is living in FL with his wife. He is invited to speak schools and give interviews. He was featured in the highly acclaimed MTV film, “I’m Still Here: Young People’s Diaries from the Holocaust” and the novel, “Hidden on the Mountain” and the novel “Salvaged Pages”.