Karen A. Frenkel

I recently finished a documentary, Family Treasures Lost and Found, and a memoir which will be published by Post Hill Press March 11. 2025 on Amazon. Both works chronicle my six-year quest to tell the story of my parents' flights from fascism during World War II. Here's the website for my memoir. For the film, I collaborated with Emmy-winning director Marcia Rock, Director of News and Documentary at NYU's Journalism Institute. Here's the website for our film, where you can see our trailer. The film premiered at the Miami Jewish Film Festival in January 2024. 

 

Our film and my book show how far my father, a newly-minted Jewish doctor, and mother, a beautiful young woman enslaved in Germany––went physically, emotionally, and morally to save themselves. Their stories of survival are intertwined with how I used my investigative skills as a reporter and genealogical techniques to fill gaps in what my parents told my sisters and me. My father never discussed his past, so we knew only the barest outline. My mother, in contrast, did speak to us about her survival, but only in snippets. In 1987, she contrbuted her story to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University. In the process of my quest, I honored my parents, sole surviving grandfather, and those lost during the war.

 

Besides scouring the Internet and probing online archives, I delved into domestic, European, and Israeli archives, had family documents translated and traveled to Vienna, Kraków, Tarnów, and Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine). Other places I researched include Southern Germany's Bavaria, as well as to Havana, Veracruz, Mexico City, Palestine, and New York. Because of the language barrier in Lviv, where my father was born, I hired a genealogist and guide to find family birth, marriage, and death entries in the State Archives of the Ukraine. I also hired a researcher to retrieve documents from the Warsaw AGAD Archive pertaining to my mother's family, which was from Kraków.

 

Besides the trailoer on our Treasures Website, you can read about the documentary and five-part series, which Marcia and I have edited for teachers to use in their classrooms.

 

To read about my forthcoming memoir, which will be available on Amazon on March 11, please visit Family Treasures Lost and Found Memoir.

 

Here's a review of the 75-minute documentary by eminent Holocaust educator, museum curator, author, and rabbi Michael Berenbaum:

 

"Karen A. Frenkel has unlocked her family treasures, once brought home in plastic bags, to tell the story of her parents' and grandparents' ordeals during the Holocaust. Her research was prodigious, her work indefatigable, and her courage admirable. As we follow their stories, the history of the Shoah unfolds, the world before, the diverse ways in which these Jews faced their fate and made life and death choices—even choiceless choices—how they dealt with the legacy of their struggle, some in silence, and some in words. As the child of survivors, Frenkel uncovers her past but the story she tells is not just personal for we begin to feel that her family could be ours. Her exploration of the past is engaging. Family Treasures is truly a treasure."

 

This review appeard in The Jewish Press.

 

Click here for an interview with Marcia and me presented by the Miami Jewish Film Festival.

 

And here is an in-depth interview of me published by my alma mater, Hampshire College.

 

If you wish to donate to the film, please do so through our Women Make Movies Webpage.

 

 

Family Treasures Lost and Found, the documentary, is a Women Make Movies Production Assistance Program Project. Established in 1972, Women Make Movies is a 501(c)3 nonprofit media arts organization registered with the New York Charities Bureau of New York State. As the fiscal sponsor, WMM accepts donations or grants on behalf of the filmmaker and the takes the responsibility of administering the funds received in support of the development and completion of the film.