Harry Houdini a boarding house on East 79th Street. He was joined by the rest of the family once Rabbi Weiss found permanent housing. As a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air". He was also a champion cross country runner in his youth. When Weiss became a professional magician he began calling himself "Harry Houdini", after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, after reading Robert-Houdin's autobiography in 1890. Weiss incorrectly believed that an "i" at the end of a name meant "like" in French. In
Elsa Ehrich arrested in Hamburg and stayed in the camp for war criminals PWE29 in Dachau, where she shared the cell with Maria Mandel. She was transferred to the Polish authorities. In 1948, she stood before the District Court of Lublin at the second Majdanek Trials, accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ehrich was found guilty of the allegations and on 10 June 1948, was condemned to death by hanging. After the announcement of the judgment, she asked the Polish President for clemency, on the grounds that she had a small son and wanted to atone for her guilt.