The Man Who Kept Escaping: Phil Freund

When Phil Freund was eight he had hope ripped away from him while sitting in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. He escaped the terrifying regime that was Nazi Germany. He thought he was saved. He was with   908 innocent people attempting to save themselves and their families to try and start a new life in Cuba or the United States. Cuba and the U.S. denied them entrance. However, Phil was one of the lucky ones who eventually was able to start anew in America. He eventually returned to Germany – as an American GI. This is his story.

Freund was born on June 5, 1931 in Munich, Germany. Four years later, racist legislation started being passed in Germany such as the passing of the Nuremburg Laws which introduced many of the racial theories in Nazi ideology. One part of the law was that Jewish individuals were not able to marry non-Jewish people.

Freud had early memories of being mistreated because of Nazi Germany. “I wanted to go to school but the teacher said,”Well, here take a look we got a dirty Jew” and the kids threw stuff at me, spit at me and I thought that this is terrible.”

Looking back on it now from his home in Wisconsin, he said, “The Holocaust was so much evil with neighbor turned against neighbor and father turned against son and son against father. If we can’t get along within the family of human beings, there’s something wrong. We were put on this Earth not to discriminate, not to treat people bad, but to help out fellow human beings.”

The saddest part of the whole thing, he said was, “That people didn’t have the courage to stand up and say enough is enough we’re not putting up with it anymore, but they were afraid.”

He pleads that people stand up for themselves, “When you see severe injustice being done speak up because the more you speak up and the less they will do, and they will learn to respect other people’s rights. Think for yourself, you gotta do that. Can’t be led around by the nose and just do what the crowd wants.”

He had some powerful words about the state of the world today with the recent bombings in Paris still on his mind. Although he said he wasn’t in a position to make military decisions anymore he said, “If we don’t do something in the world with ISIS and put them down and put them in their place, the whole Middle East is going to explode.” He goes on to explain that, “We’ve got so many problems in that area that we can’t just let it shuffle off and do nothing. You can’t sweep it under the rug and forget about it, so we have to do something.”

His family stayed because Freund’s father was a true German who believed in his country.

However, in 1937, his father knew life wasn’t going well for his people, which led him to smuggle money into Holland to start a new life.  However, when the Gestapo, the Nazi police, found out, there was hell to pay. They held his mother hostage and his father was ordered to come back with “every penny.” He returned every last cent, but Phil never  never saw his family again.  The Gestapo came looking for Freund’s dad but when he wasn’t found, Phil was beat up in the process. That’s when his mother decided that he and his family had to escape this toxic country.

Freund spoke about how scared everyone was for their safety and how it tore families apart, “The fear factor was tremendous. It was so bad, you couldn’t even trust your own kids because they would turn you in. And I said, my God, it’s that bad because one kid got angry at his parents and turned him into the Nazis.”

Their prayers were answered in 1939. The M.S. St. Louis was bringing over 900 Jewish people from Europe to Cuba.  Freund’s sister, mom and grandmother needed a sponsor so they could go on the ship which ended up being Phil’s uncle. The plan was to get to Cuba, where they would meet with his uncle and then make their way to Miami.  They had to pay $500 a piece to board the ship which was a huge chunk of change back then.

“You were not allowed to take money, anything of value out,” he said. He was told he could take one toy so he took his stuffed monkey and put it in the suitcase.

The conditions on the ship were a huge juxtaposition to that in his home town. On the ship, the conditions were “fantastic.” He went on to explain, “At home I couldn’t go to the park. I had to play in the backyard.  However, when he was on the ship, he could go everywhere.”

He was even handed a menu while on the boat, but he couldn’t read because he couldn’t go to school. The servers of the boat helped him read the menu and even went as far as to cut his meat for him. The captain told the ship’s workers to “treat us like tourists and decent.”

When the ship’s passengers were forced to go back to Europe, you can only imagine what was going onin the vessel.  Freund said that the U.S. didn’t accept the St. Louis because the Great Depression was happening at the meantime and they couldn’t afford to take in refugees. All of the passengers were beyond devastated. Tensions were so high that Freud said there were groups of people getting together to either commit suicide or to organize a mutiny of the ship.

When they returned to Europe, the Freud family was luckily able to go to England instead of the other countries such as Holland and Germany which were eventually under Nazi regime by 1940.

They knew they had to get out of the death trap which was Europe, so they made their way to the Stockholm where there was a neutral ship that was coming to America. The same uncle who was supposed to meet them in Havana met them in Hoboken, New Jersey. He got a job at a printing plant. “Now there’s a problem with that. Have you ever heard of a colorblind printer?” Freund has really learned to develop a sense of humor over the years through everything he had to endure.

Freund eventually decided to enlist in the army. The Army was in desperate need of a German linguist, so he decided to go back to Germany and said, “Your prayers are answered.” He went back in in the 1950’s.

When he went back, he wasn’t sure how to treat the people who forced him out of his country. He said, “You know, you have a choice. You can either be the ugly nasty mean just a decrepit human being or you can have a good time and learn as much as you possibly can.” Freund seemed to take the road less traveled by someone who deserved to have a vengeance.

When asked why he would join the Army to defend a country that originally didn’t want his people he said, “One word, opportunity. They paid for my bachelors, they paid for my masters. I get a pension, I get medical coverage. I mean there are so many good things that came out of it. It wasn’t all peaches and crème.  I’d be lying to you if I told you that. But I saw more good things come out of it than bad things.”

When he went back to Germany in the 50’s, he felt empowered because before, “it was completely different, I was a minority member that was persecuted in the 1940’s. 1950’s, I carried over side armor 45-caliber semi automatic pistol. Who’s going to fight with me?”

He was in the Army for 40 years, with three years in the field and 37 years in the reserves. He’s been retired since he made the high military rank of full colonel in 1991.

Freund is obviously very fond of the military. He’s even held briefings for the Pentagon, which he did for two weeks every summer for 17 years.

He wrote a book about his experiences for “grandkids, great grand kids, great great great grandkids, for the future.”

Also he wants people to understand the terror of what happened in Germany during the Holocaust, and he explains that if we don’t remember that it’s probably going to happen again.“ It’s not against the Jews; it’s against non Muslims that include Jews. But if we don’t do something to prevent this kind of murder it’s going to repeat itself over and over again. The Jewish people have gone through enough in their history.”

From all the struggles and obstacles he’s faced in his life, the one thing  he’s learned from it is to “treat people decent” however, “sometimes I make the mistake of treating people too decent and they take advantage of me.”