Felicia Brill

Of Blessed Memory 1922 – 2010

Felicia Sussman was born in 1922 in Vienna, Austria. She enjoyed a comfortable life as the only child of her parents with a large extended family. Shortly after the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Felicia’s father was warned of his impending arrest and was able to flee to Prague. Felicia and her mother followed a few months later, making their way across the war-torn Sudetenland to be reunited. After a short time in Czechoslovakia the family was again separated with Felicia and her then pregnant mother fleeing to Italy while her father fled east into Poland, only to be later killed in Treblinka. Felicia’s mother eventually emigrated to England where she gave birth to a son and was imprisoned in an English interment camp as a foreign national. Felicia made her way to Portugal on false documents, eventually making her way to Ecuador where she met and married her husband, Victor Brill. The Brills emigrated to the United States in 1951.