Karen A. Frenkel

In 2014, I embarked upon a journey of discovery to fill gaps in my parents' World War II stories of survival. My father, a Polish refugee from Lwów, now Lviv, Ukraine, disclosed nothing of his pre-war life. He died at age 57 when I was 15, so I never had the opportunity to talk to him adult-to-adult. My mother survived as a slave laborer in Germany posing as a Catholic Pole. In contrast to my father, she did talk about the war, but spoke selectively to my sisters and me of her travails. I'm very grateful, however, that in 1987 at my urging, she recorded her story for the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University. Her plight as a teenager upon the onset of the war and through Liberation was complicated, so I scoured Poland's online and real archives to clarify and fact-check her tale.

All I knew of my enigmatic father's life in Europe was told to me by my mother and his older brother. To discover more about my father's medical school days at the University of Vienna and how he arrived in New York via the Caribbean in 1939, I perused virtual and real archives in Poland, Ukraine, Israel, and the United States. When confronted by language barriers, I hired researchers and genealogists. My father served in the U.S. Army Medical Corp and treated soldiers in Southern England, Normandy, and The Battle of the Bulge. Ultimately, I was able to match the many unlabeled photos of his wartime collection to his unit history, which I found in the National Archives.

In 2016, I visited the cities where most of the action took place: Kraków (my mother's birthplace), Vienna, Tarnów (where my maternal grandparents sent my mother in 1941 thinking it would be safer than Lwów where they were hiding on the Aryan side), and Lviv, Ukraine, previously Lwów, Poland (the location of my paternal grandparents' stunning house). I knew not only that my grandfather had buried jewels there but also just were to look. I did not know that the house is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. I also take readers to Havana, Veracruz, and New York City, where a large part of my father's story takes place. 

The resulting memoir, 75-minute documentary, and series of five documentary shorts chronicle my parents' and only grandfather's survival, and the fates of my other grandparents and uncle, and my investigative quest. I detail the lengths to which my father, mother, and paternal grandfather went physically, emotionally, and morally to save themselves, and how far I went to find facts. Director Marcia Rock and Consulting Producer Roger Sherman, both award-winning filmmakers, collaborated with me on the Family Treasures Lost and Found documentaries.

I began my painstaking process of discovery with low expectations, and never found the material treasure my grandfather hid, but an adventure unfurled full of unexpected twists and turns. I was astounded by the rich information in 19th and early 20th century documents just waiting to be found. The most surprising reward, however, is a deep sense of connection to my lost relatives, especially my three grandparents and uncle, who until now were strangers I referred to as my mother's father, my mother's mother, and my father's mother., my father's little brother. I discovered another kind of treasure; I learned that it is possible to love people you have never met. 

For more information about my memoir, which will be available on Amazon on March 11, please visit Family Treasures Lost and Found Memoir. 

For more information about the Family Treasures documentaries, please visit the site for Family Treasures Lost and Found Documentary and Five-Part Series.

"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."

—Michael Berenbaum, rabbi, Holocaust educator, historian, museum curator, and author, includng A Promise to Remember: The Holocaust in the Words and Voices of Its Survivors, Elie Wiesel: God, the Holocaust, and the Children of Israel, After Tragedy and Triumph: Essays in Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience.

In the late 1980s through my reporting on the computer industry, I saw that we would be communicating more and more through multimedia (as we called it back then), so I decided to move into video production.

My first documentary is the award-winning Minerva’s Machine: Women and Computing. I created, wrote, and executive produced the one-hour film, which aired on Public Television during the 1995 - 1996 and fall 1998 seasons. It explored the reasons why women were opting out of computer science graduate programs and industry at a time when the field seemed full of opportunity for all kinds of talent. Is there something particular to computer science and engineering that is responsible for this leaky pipline, I asked. Minerva’s Machine premiered in fall 1995 on San Jose’s PBS station, KTEH - Channel 54 and on over 60 other local PBS stations nationwide. It was rebroadcast in fall 1998, fall 2007, and fall 2009.

Awards
• Best Documentary in a Small Market, 1997 EMMA (Exceptional Merit Media Award), given by National Women’s Political Caucus and Radcliffe College
• Best Documentary, Brooklyn Arts Council’s 30th Annual International Film and Video Festival
• Best Television Series, Runner Up, Eleventh Annual Computer Press Award

I directed, co-wrote, and co-produced net.LEARNING, a two-hour documentary that explores the trade-offs students and faculty were willing to make in the early days online classrooms. The film profiles a student of library science in Alaska, for example, who collaborates in cyberspace with cohorts in Chicago and Urbana-Champaign. Also portrayed is a professor of literature in San Luis Obisbo and many others pioneering this medium. I was also co-executive producer and originated the project with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Net.LEARNING aired on Public Television stations nationwide during the 1998 - 1999 season. It was rebroadcast during the 1999-2000 season.

Award
• 1998 National Education Reporting First Prize, Television Documentary and Feature