Disciplines
Jewish Studies
Abstract
Summarizer: Sophia Maier
Howard Fredrics paternal grandparents came from Poland, and his maternal grandparents came from Ukraine, eventually all settling in the Bronx. His parents, both living in the Bronx, met in the Catskills, where his father was performing as a magician. Fredrics himself lived on Walton Avenue across the street from Joyce Kilmer Park. He remembers playing in that park, going to the candy store and deli, and visiting his family members’ stores. He would go with his father, a professional magician with various other jobs, to rent pigeons in the Bronx for his shows, which Fredrics would later take part in by age 12.
In 1968, Fredrics’ family moved from the Bronx to Roslyn Heights, Long Island, where he grew up and still owns the family house. He grew up surrounded by music and theatrical performance, both of his parents being piano players, which influenced his career in music. Fredrics received his doctorate in music from the University of Texas Austin, where he met his wife.
In 2002, Fredrics moved to England to work as a university professor of music, during which time he faced antisemitism and threats of violence, becoming a whistleblower for corruption. He eventually fled the country, though all charges were dropped against him in 2017. Fredrics is very interested in researching and documenting his family’s history, including writing an opera about his cousin, the boxer Jack Kid Berg, and finding and meeting distant relatives from Europe, Canada, and South America.
When Fredrics left the Bronx in 1968, he witnessed the begin of the decimation of the borough, not visiting regularly for many years. More recently, he has started attending Yankee games more frequently and walking around his old neighborhood nearby. Fredrics shares that though the ethnic makeup is different, it is the same in the sense that it is the latest immigrant groups, as the Jews once were. He associates the Bronx with the joy and fun of being a kid, but also the loss of all the family he once knew there.
Keywords: Poland, Ukraine, Catskills, Walton Avenue, Joyce Kilmer Park, Yankee Stadium, dentist, Mullaly Park, PS 114, family, Xavier Cugat Big Band, magic, television, Long Island, England, Kingston University, antisemitism, Labour Party, trial, Jack Kid Berg, opera, music, University of Texas Austin, Yiddish, genealogy, Holocaust
Recommended Citation
Stovall, Reyna Lee, "Fredrics, Howard" (2024). Bronx Jewish History Project. 92.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/bjhp/92
