Regina P. Freeman

Regina Puderbeutel Freeman passed away August 27, 2020, after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease. Regina was a Holocaust survivor, a Jewish child of WWII. Born in 1933 in Hitler's Germany, she was placed in a convent for protection until age six, when she rejoined her parents and sister and fled across the German border into Poland. They were soon deported by train on a cattle car across eastern Europe and through Russia on a long journey to Stalin's Gulag in Siberia, where she lived until age 13, and where her father was detained and killed by the Red Army. After WWII Regina was liberated from the Gulag in 1946, as Stalin allowed a brief window of time for Jews to leave Russia. She was separated from her mother and sister and was a teenage refugee in Europe's D.P. camps, where she was helped by a Dutch woman who was a United Nations Aid to Refugees who remained a friend to her throughout her life. Regina was young enough to be eligible to travel to Israel, which was at that time the British Mandate of Palestine, to find her brother, who, just before Kristallnacht had gone to Palestine to join the Haganah that would later become the Israeli Army. As a follower of the late Jabotinsky's movement for Jewish youth, Regina boarded a small ship in Marseille to travel to Palestine, lying flat with no room to stand in the crowded hull, until it was seized en route by the British. She was then placed in a detention camp on Cyprus for nine months before finally getting to Israel. She joined the Israeli Army in 1948, was released from active duty in 1949, and was on reserve in Israel until 1956. Her brother had died during the Israeli War of Independence, and Regina wanted to immigrate to America to find her mother and sister who had survived and had made their way to New York in the post-war era.

Regina finally boarded a freighter on a six-week journey to America in 1957, where she was reunited with her sister and mother in New York City, and where she met and married Edwin Freeman in 1964 and had two children. Although they loved their many years in the city, Regina, having many interesting jobs including working for the Engineering Department at Columbia University, Ed and Regina moved their family to Ed's hometown of Clemson, South Carolina in 1969. Ed, a beloved music professor at Clemson University, passed away in 2017 at 89. His family were musicians and engineers. Regina's father-in-law, Edwin Jones Freeman, founded the Industrial Engineering program at Clemson University.

As a war refugee, Regina never had a formal education, but she learned to speak six languages, was a gifted artist, and developed a vast knowledge of classical music. She worked for many years as a technical typist of research papers for the Engineering Services Department at Clemson University. Her artistry was a special asset in typing complex equations with Greek lettering, to turn handwritten engineering manuscripts into publishable papers. Her skill in this occupation became popular, and many engineering graduate students brought their manuscripts to Regina to be typed with perfection. International students in Clemson were also drawn to Regina, especially those who appreciated being able to speak with her in Russian, German, and Hebrew over the years. She made them feel at home in a foreign land.

Regina is survived by her son, Louis Howard Freeman of Clemson and daughter, Mina Starr Freeman Hinson (Steve) of Columbia; her sister, Gusti Puderbeutel Lifshitz, 91, still resides in New York City with her husband, Martin, an Auschwitz survivor; beloved nieces and nephews descended from her sister, and also descended from her late husband's brother, Louis Starr Freeman, who also passed away this summer at age 95.

Duckett-Robinson Funeral Home & Cremations is assisting the family.