| Born: | 03-15-1916 |
| Faculty: | Law School |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Elfriede FEUER, born on March 15th, 1916 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, citizenship 1938: Austria), daughter of Moses Srul/Moritz Feuer (1877-1940, merchant) and Rifke/Regine Feuer, née Eigenfeld (1884-?), and lived in Vienna's 2nd district, Ausstellungsstrasse 37/14. She had passed her school-leaving examination (Matura) at Realgymnasium in Vienna's 2nd district, and graduated from the Federal College for the Textile Industry in Vienna's 5th district, Spengergasse 20, and then began to study law at the University of Vienna alongside her work as a textile technician. She was last enrolled in the fall term of 1937/38 at the Law School in the 2nd year of her studies and had already passed the first state examination.
After the Anschluss, she was forced by the Nazis to drop out of her studies for racist reasons and leave the University of Vienna, as was her brother, Artur Leo Feuer, who had not yet received his doctorate after completing his law degree in 1936 and was only able to do so in July 1938 after a long wait and only under the discriminatory conditions of a “non-Aryan doctorate”, which was also associated with a professional ban in the German Reich.
Elfriede Feuer had worked in the weaving and spinning mill of Felixdorfer Textilfabrik & Appretur AG in Vienna's 9th district, Tendlergasse 16 in the office and in the factory since November 1935 and was dismissed as a Jew at the end of June 1938 and had to flee Vienna. On August 1st, 1938, she applied to the emigration office of the Jewish Community Vienna for support to emigrate to either Argentina, Australia, England, the USA or Colombia. In the same month, a cousin of her mother, Sigmondo Eigenfeld, brought her from Vienna to his place in Milano, Italy, where she lived and worked for a year. She was then able to emigrate to the USA via Paris, Le Havre/France in 1939 with the ship Ile de France, arriving in New York on August 22nd, 1939. Her parents also managed to escape in the spring of 1939 and were able to emigrate from Vienna to Palestine [Israel] where her father dies soon after.
Elfriede Feuer lived in New York for some time, then got work through a relative in the textile industry in Fall Rivers, Mass., where she also met her future husband, the lawyer Jacob (Jack) Gerald Sobiloff (1912-1994), whom she married on April 21st, 1940 and with whom she had a child in early 1942 - son Michael Sobiloff. After the death of her husband her mother moved from Palestine via Egypt to join her in the USA in 1943.
The family later moved to San Francisco, CA, where Elfriede's brothers, who had come to the USA via Shanghai and Manilla, also lived and worked in the import/export sector. In addition to working in evening classes, Elfriede Sobiloff began studying American law at the University of San Francisco in 1959 and was able to complete her studies in 1963.
She was admitted to the Californian bar and worked as a lawyer and criminal defense attorney. Elfriede Sobiloff later lived and worked in Millbrae, San Matteo County/CA and retired in 1999.
Elfriede F. (Elly) Sobiloff, née Feuer, died on September 12th, 2012 in Millbrae, CA/USA and is burried at Hills of Eternity Memorial Park in Colma, San Mateo County, CA/USA.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") IUS 1936-1938; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 381; Austrian Heritage Collection at Leo Baeck Institute New York/Questionnaires AR 10378; interview from March 28th, 2007, The Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project/USHMM (interviewer: Hilde Gattmann, videographer: Ann Green Saldinger); https://familysearch.org; https://www.ancestry.at; https://www.myheritage.at.
Herbert Posch
