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 Biography

Karen A. Frenkel

Karen A. Frenkel is an award-winning technology and science journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker. Frenkel is the producer of the documentary Family Treasures Lost and Found, a companion to this memoir (www.familytreasuresfilm.com). She is co-author with Isaac Asimov of Robots: Machines in Man's Image. Her previous award-winning documentaries appeared on public television: Minerva's Machine: Women and Computing, winner of the Exceptional Media Merit Award (EMMA) for Best Television Documentary (Small Market), and Net.LEARNING, winner of the National Education Reporting First Prize Television Documentary Feature. Her many articles have appeared in magazines, newspapers, and websites, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Communications of the ACM, Discover, Essence, FastCompany.com, Forbes, Science Magazine, Scientific American, Technology Review, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and U.S. News & World Report. 

 

For more information please visit https://www.karenafrenkel.com

 

Discoveries

Discoveries

Irena Goldberger Frenkel's Thread

  • Maternal grandfather Izydor Goldberger's World War I bronze and silver medals for valor, Austrian State Archives.
  • St. Nicholas church in Lwów, which issued the Certificate of Baptism of Irena's alias.
  • Great-aunt Augusta and great-uncle Wilek Mandel's apartment in Tarnów.
  • Gestapo Headquarters in Tarnów, where Irena got special stamp that saved her life.
  • Jewish house appropriated by Farmer Oppelt in Bad Neustadt, on map of Jewish houses on website Unfolding Communities: The Last Jews of Bad Neustadt.
  • Siemens factory location and pre-war photographs. 
  • Contact Ress descendants, Irena's second employer, who did not sympathize with Nazis.
  • Contact with Farmer Oppelt's son. 
  • Had depositions of Irena's 1958 lawsuit against the German government translated, revealing extent of persecution and deprivation of medical treatment. She won.

David Frenkel's Thread

  • University of Vienna Memorial Book, virtual and real-life.
  • Identified Flandre, ship David sailed on from France to the Caribbean. Found itinerary through owner French Lines, proving that his original destination was Havana, not Mexico.
  • Feature story in June 9, 1939 Austin American-Statesman about David and Rose in Havana.
  • David's tour of duty, European Theater, as medical officer, 93rd Medical Gas Treatment Battalion. 
  • Location of German POW hospital David Commanded. Château Villers-Hélon, near Soissons.
  • Rose's son, who volunteered that his father was a gangster and partner with Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel.
  • Dr. Robert Root's real name, Rosenberg, Czech, and that he, like my father, graduated from the University of Vienna Medical School. He escaped Europe from Genoa, Italy. Discharge information, date of death, and grave. 

Grandfather Ojzer Fränkel's Thread

  • Fränkel house in Lviv. A Unesco World Heritage site.
  • That the Fränkels were thrown out of Rejtana 5 during the Soviet Occupation, Ojzer and Michaela's new address, and Uncle Milek and his bride's new address.
  • Lviv Polytechnic dossier of Milek, which yielded information about Ojzer's pre-war occupation and the food coop where he worked and met my other grandfather, Izydor. Name of Milek's wife, Feiga Aiesenstadt, and father-in-law's occupation.
  • Arolsen Archives document showing that Ojzer was arrested by Gestapo, Sept 1941.
  • Zionist Archives document indicating that Ojzer left Lwów 10/4/43, arrived in Budapest May 24, 1944. 
  • Identified date and flotilla of ships Ojzer did and did not board from Constanza to Turkey in 1944 (Mefkura, torpedoed, Bulbul, and Morina, which arrived safely).  
  • Proof detained in Camp Atlit, Palestine. 
  • Memo about letter to President Truman seeking furlough for David to reunite with him in Palestine, Truman Presidential Library.

Great- and Great-Great-Grandparents Thread

  • Computer scientist Dan Hirschberg's electronic Finkelstein family tree online, based on Mormon's microfiches of Kraków birth, death, and marriage records. Part of Hirschberg's colleciton of 700 root Kraków family trees he built.
  • Short story-like entries in registry of births (1824, 1841) and marriages (1862) of Lewys and Finkelsteins. Four generations back, Kraków/Kazimierz and Piotrków when was in the Pale.
  • Great-grandmother Sara Finkelstein's calling card font, identified as Schwabacher, with help of Monk Robert Paladino, Steve Jobs' professor of calligraphy at Reed College.
  • Model of Great-great-grandfather Herman Lewy's car, from photo. Consulted antique car experts: German-made 1905 Argus.
  • Great-grandfather-Heinrich Finkelstein and family in 1910 Polish Census document.
  • Great-great grandfather Abraham Finkelstein's family in 1870 Polish Census. His monument in Neu Jewish Cemetery, Kraków.
  • Sibonney, ship great-grandparents' sailed on from Lisbon to the United States in February 1941.

California Finkelstein Branch (name changed to Marx, then Marks)

  • California Marks family, forefather Mozes Marks (né Finkelstein) and relationship to my great-great-grandfather Abraham Finkelstein. They were brothers and sons of Markus Finkelstein. Mozes emigrated from Kraków shortly after the Gold Rush, arrived in San Francisco in 1851, and was an early settler of Stockton, CA.
  • Pinpointed visit of Great-uncle-I. F. (for Finkel Stein, né Finkelstein) to Kraków to 1937, when he offered to adopt Irena. He had joined his uncle, Mozes Marks, in Stockton in the 1880s.

 

These discoveries made this reluctant quest, this tainted treasure hunt, seem magical, and yet it can never approximate my parents' miraculous survival.

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