Wedding dress made from Filipino fabric is testament to family’s Nazi Germany escape

When Israeli-born Yarden Fried marries in May, she’ll wear a dress made from pina, traditional Philippines fabric linking to her German-born grandfather’s Holocaust-era journey

Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center

The original skirt of Yarden Fried's wedding dress made from pina, the traditional Philippines fabric sent by her great-grandparents, German Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi Germany to the Philippines in 1939 (Courtesy Yarden Fried)
The original skirt of Yarden Fried's wedding dress made from pina, the traditional Philippines fabric sent by her great-grandparents, German Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi Germany to the Philippines in 1939 (Courtesy Yarden Fried)

There are many ways the Preiss family remembers the Holocaust-era escape of Ralph Preiss and his parents from Nazi Germany to the Philippines, where they settled as refugees for the next two decades.

Among them are stories of hiding in the jungle during the Japanese invasion toward the end of the war, of the Jewish community that flourished there, and of a wedding dress made from pina, a traditional Philippine fiber made from the leaves of the pineapple plant.

That very dress is about to be worn by Yarden Fried, an Israeli-born third-generation member of the family. The design has changed but the garment hold much meaning for Fried and her place in the family’s history.

The Preisses received three of the 1,200 visas issued in 1939 for Austrian and German Jews seeking asylum from the Nazis, although 10,000 had been earmarked by Philippine President Manuel Quezon in a plan hatched with American high commissioner Paul McNutt, lieutenant colonel Dwight Eisenhower, and Jewish American businessman Alex Frieder.

The family of three made it to Manila just after Kristallnacht, with Ralph’s father, Harry Preiss, chosen as one of 14 doctors for Manila, although instead of working as a physician he built a pharmaceutical factory.

In 1945, the Preisses and other German refugees evaded the Japanese invasion of the Philippines by escaping into the jungle. They spent three months, surviving on wild sweet potatoes and little other food and trying to keeping two steps ahead of the Japanese forces.

Ralph Preiss, middle, with his parents, Harry and Margot, before leaving the Philippines for the US (Courtesy Lisa Preiss-Fried)

Because of that, “we never had a sweet potato in our house,” said Lisa Preiss-Fried, mother of Yarden Fried and one of Ralph’s four daughters born and raised in the US.

Ralph Preiss was nine when he left Germany with his parents, and 19 when he left the Philippines to study electrical engineering at MIT at the urging of a cousin in the US.

His parents stayed in Manila for a total of 30 years and had “a beautiful life,” said Preiss-Fried. “They carved community out in this third world country.”

Meanwhile, Ralph Preiss earned a bachelor’s degree at MIT and a master’s at the University of Connecticut, where he met his future wife, Marcia, at a Hillel Shabbat dinner.

Ralph and Marcia Preiss at their 1952 wedding in Connecticut; Marcia is wearing a dress made of pina, a traditional Philippines fabric sent from her in-laws in Manila, who escaped Nazi Germany to the Philippines in 1939 (Courtesy Lisa Preiss-Fried)

When they married in 1952, Marcia wore a dress made from pina fabric sent by Ralph’s parents from the Philippines.

“My grandmother sent yards of pina to my grandparents in Derby, Connecticut,” said Press-Fried.

The fabric, beautiful although prickly, was made into a wedding dress with a full skirt that “practically stood on its own,” said Preiss-Fried.

The dress was stashed away in a cardboard box in a cedar closet of their Poughkeepsie home, where the family settled when Ralph Preiss was hired by IBM, his employer for for his entire career.

“I used to try it on and saunter around the house,” she said, “and daydream about wearing the dress.”

Lisa Preiss-Fried and her husband, Eitan Fried, at their 1988 wedding; Preiss-Fried is wearing her mother’s wedding dress made of pina, the traditional Philippines fabric sent by her grandparents, German Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi Germany to the Philippines in 1939 (Courtesy Lisa Preiss-Fried)

Preiss-Fried moved to Israel in 1982, where she met her husband, Eitan, in 1985 and married in 1988. She wore her mother’s pina wedding dress, as did her sister, Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman, when she got married in 1994 in New York.

When Yarden Fried got engaged a year and a half ago, she thought about wearing the dress that represented a real link to her family’s past.

Fried and her fiance, Ido (who goes by the nickname Farid) Faizi, didn’t get engaged until he had met her grandparents and received their blessing, but the wedding was pushed off when Fried’s grandmother, Marcia, died just six months later.

“The idea about wearing the dress became much more real after she died,” said Fried.

The fabric is hard to work with, said Fried, but she felt like she had a responsibility to the family tradition.

“I’m part of the next generation in the Preiss family,” said Fried. “It makes me think of our family, of my grandfather’s story and a way to insert the old in the new.”

Her grandfather, Ralph Preiss, now 92 and residing in the US, will be at the wedding in Israel in two weeks, his first visit to Israel in some years.

Yarden Fried’s wedding dress redesign in progress made of pina, the traditional Philippines fabric sent by her great-grandparents, German Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi Germany to the Philippines in 1939 (Courtesy Yarden Fried)

The dress is receiving another lease on life with a redesign by Naomi Tsodikov, a Shenkar-trained designer based in Beersheba who creates evening dresses.

“She took the project because of the story,” said Fried. “She got emotional, and she understood the nostalgia behind it.”

The pina fabric had yellowed by the time it reached Tsodikov, and she figured out how to carefully clean it and bring back its original bright white sheen.

It still required some emotional navigation for Yarden Fried to rethink the lines of the dress.

“My grandma wasn’t into cleavage and I have tattoos. I’m the opposite of her,” said Fried, who has stripped away much of the dress’s shape with a modern, casual outline. “Now when I put it on, I feel that she would love it; that always makes me emotional.”

Yarden Fried (left) with her fiance, Ido (Farid) Faizi; Fried will wear her grandmother’s wedding dress, a testament to the family’s 1939 escape from Nazi Germany (Courtesy Yarden Fried)

She kept several elements, including some beading in the back and panels of the pina fabric in the front bodice that is still being completed by Tsodikov in these final weeks before the wedding.

There is also the knowledge that she, like her mother, aunts and grandmother, have a similar body shape.

“I’ve known this dress since I’m born,” said Fried, mentioning a photo taken of her at three, holding on to the skirt of the dress when it was worn by her aunt Jacqueline.

Fried’s grandfather has seen photos of the dress during its ongoing refurbishment and redesign and told her he loves it, and that her grandmother would have loved it as well.

“There’s so much meaning to this,” said Fried. “It’s not just a wedding dress.”

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