103-YEAR-OLD WOMAN WITNESSED HISTORY.

Byline: Steve Carney Staff Writer

On the verge of having lived in three centuries, 103-year-old Frieda Krieg couldn't believe all she's seen in her lifetime and couldn't imagine what advances to expect in 2000 and beyond.

In a lifetime that has seen the first airplane, the advent of computers, satellite communications and the atomic age, Krieg said she was most impressed by the moon landing on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on another world.

``I never thought I'd see that. I was very impressed,'' said Krieg, who lived in the same West Hollywood apartment for 48 years, before moving into the Country Villa Terrace rest home in Los Angeles 1 1/2 years ago.

``It's a very interesting life I've had. I went to a lot of places and saw a lot of things,'' said Krieg, who will turn 104 on April 26.

She's lived in the 19th and 20th centuries already, but she said she can't imagine what will come to pass as the 21st century dawns, saying she prefers to leave that to younger generations.

``Young people all the time are into modern things,'' she said. ``I'm just old old. It's very new to me.''

Krieg was born in 1896, in a town called Dej, in what was then Hungary but is now Romania. She's been married and widowed twice, and is mother to Anne Davis, 79, of Sherman Oaks and Albert Roth, 68, of Los Angeles.

From her childhood in Hungary, where the assassination of the archduke led to World War I, to her immigration to the United States and struggles during the Depression, to the loss of her family in the Holocaust, to her move to Los Angeles in 1950 amid the height of the postwar building boom, Krieg has seen much in her lifetime. And looking forward to her 104th birthday in the spring, she hopes to see even more.

But history has touched her life in a very personal and terrible way.

In the Holocaust, the Nazis killed her mother, father, five sisters and their families. Krieg found out from her brother, who had escaped to fight with the partisans in Yugoslavia. Krieg had already immigrated to the United States by then.

``She came from a comfortable family life to here, where she really struggled,'' said her son, Roth. After landing at Ellis Island, she and her first husband moved to Cleveland and ``opened up a dress shop at the worst possible time, in the depths of the Depression.''

Even though she was still learning English, she became an American citizen the moment her five-year waiting period was up.

``She was very serious about that. It's not like it's handed to you,'' said her daughter, Davis, who added that her mother never missed voting in an election after that.

Krieg, who was 7 years old when the Wright brothers made their first flight, said putting the same effort into all her endeavors that she put into becoming a citizen is what has kept her young.

``I've worked very hard in my life, and I liked it,'' she said. ``That's why I've lived so long.''

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Photo: Frieda Krieg, 103, experienced both tragedy and triumph as she lived her long life in Europe and the United States.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer