03/10/2021
As told to us by Gold Star Mother Kim House Hayes.
Amazing story of our beautiful Shirley Praeger Libby’s family heritage of service and sacrifice. Kim House Hayes is with Shirley Praeger Libby.
Last November, I was visiting my dear friend Shirley Praeger Libby (Gold Star mother of PFC Jo-Ann Elizabeth Libby), and when I asked something about her childhood, she mentioned that she never knew her father because he was killed in WWll. WHAT??! I said “Shirley, you’re a Gold Star daughter?” And she replied “I guess I am.”
That has begun a sweet search by her for more information on her father, PVT Benjamin M Praeger.
What she has learned is astounding, as he (from Poland) and her mother (from Austria) were both Holocaust survivors, moved to America, then he enlisted in our US Armed Forces Infantry to fight against the tyranny he himself had experienced. What sacrifice and love.
Shirley said her mother never changed her phone number, in hopes that the tragic news had somehow been a mistake and perhaps he was alive and would call someday.
It’s amazing to think that Shirley’s own daughter Jo-Ann came by her service and sacrifice honestly, although she never knew her grandfather.
Please take a moment to read the amazing obituary that tells the story, and maybe even do a google search of Buchenwald. SHIRLEY, THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER’S HEROIC STORY.
(PS - photo of me and Shirley is pre-covid, but I wanted you to see her beautiful smile)
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From the Stamford Advocate
Saturday, November 18, 1944
PVT PRAEGER, FORMER PRISONER OF GERMANS IS KILLED IN ACTION
Pvt. Benjamin M. Praeger, 35, of 60 West Washington Ave., veteran of a N**i concentration camp, was killed in action in Europe on November 3, according to a War Department telegram received last night by his widow.
The couple has one child, Shirley Esther Praeger, one year old on November 4.
Pvt. and Mrs. Praeger came to this country by way of a N**i prison camp. Married in Vienna in 1935, they were residing there at the time of the N**i “Anschluss” in 1938.
Arrested by the Gestapo, they spent seven months in the N**i concentration camp at Buchenwald, having been released in June 1939.
They made their way to England and came to this country in August 1940. They soon came to Stamford, and Mr. Praeger was employed at Freydberg Bros-Strauss, Inc. on Fairfield Ave.
Inducted into the Armed Forces on August 7, 1944, Pvt. Praeger received his basic training at Fort Mclellan, Ala., and was sent overseas in August.
Landing in England, which he had last seen in the same month four years earlier, he went with the First Army through France and Belgium. He was a private in the Infantry.
Mrs. Praeger received word a few days ago that her husband had been awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge, and then last night, the telegram announcing his death in action.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Pvt. Praeger is survived by four sisters, Mrs. Regina Borger, Mrs. Bertha Muezer and Mrs. Yedda Book, all of New York City; and Mrs. Ethel Neufeld, of Newark, and a brother Harry Praeger, of New York City.
