Buffalo Grove Woman Remembered For Community ServiceFree Access

Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall’s family were in attendance at the July 19 Buffalo Grove Village Board meeting to accept a proclamation in her honor.

Buffalo Grove village trustees July 19 honored longtime resident Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall with a proclamation due to her longtime contribution to the community prior to her recent passing. 

In 1944, when Fritzshall was 13-years-old, Nazis forcibly took her, her mother, and her two brothers from their home in Czechoslovakia, and transported them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. 

Upon arrival, a prisoner told her that when she was asked, she should say she was 15-years-old. Heeding his advice, she lined up with the 15-year-olds, and credited the man’s act of kindness with saving her life that day. She worked as a slave laborer in the camp, witnessing and experiencing her captors’ acts of hatred. She never saw her mother and brothers again since they were murdered at Auschwitz.

Through determination of will, she escaped into the forest during a death march in 1945 and ran from the captors who had taken so much from her — her childhood, her family, her freedom. After being rescued by Soviet forces, she made her way to Chicago and was reunited with her father, who had immigrated to the United States prior to the family’s detention. She became a hairdresser, and met and married Norman Fritzshall, a World War II veteran and Japanese POW survivor. She later made Buffalo Grove her home, bringing her generous, selfless, and kind spirit to the community.

The hardship she experienced at such a young age propelled her into action. She embraced her difficult past and used her story for good, openly sharing her experiences. She fought tirelessly against hatred and intolerance while also advocating for social justice, working to end the United States refugee crisis, and quelling rising anti-semitism. 

She founded the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, serving as its president from its opening in 2009 until her death June 19, 2021. For her lifelong efforts to combat prejudice and hatred, she was awarded the Bertha Honoré Palmer Making History Award for Distinction in Civic Leadership from the Chicago History Museum, the Global Citizenship Hero Award from the Chicago Red Cross, and the 2021 Outstanding Community Leader Award from the Chicago Cultural Alliance.

According to village officials, her story contains great pain, but is a story of resilience, living her life in service to others, spreading a message of kindness, generosity, and tolerance. Officials added she was an inspiration to many and will be dearly missed by the Buffalo Grove community.