Raucher, Philip | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

Philip (Pinkus) Raucher was born in Czeladz, Poland, in a small city in the southwestern part of Poland near Germany. His family included his parents, an older sister, a younger brother, and a large extended family. Philip Raucher attended both a public school and a private religious school and participated in many sports growing up. He also joined the Polish Boy Scouts and had many non-Jewish friends. He was twelve when the war started, and the Raucher family put up several Jewish families who were deported from Germany across the border because of their Polish passports.

During the war, he lived in the Czeladz ghetto and was eventually taken to Markstadt labor camp. From there, he was taken to a concentration camp called Funfteichen, a branch of Grossrosen. After the war, Raucher returned to Czeladz, where he found that his sister and uncle had been. He discovered his uncle and sister in his uncle’s home town and smuggled them into Czechoslovakia, then Austria, and into Munich, West Germany.

Philip Raucher eventually moved to the United States, but his sister and her husband were unable to obtain an entry visa into the U.S. and instead moved to Brazil. After moving to the United States, Mr. Raucher immediately started adult education and attended UCLA. He became a mechanical engineer, specializing in air conditioning. He married, and had children--a son and a daughter--and now has two granddaughters.