Family Treasures Lost and Found

Children of Holocaust survivors often know little about their lost relatives and even the stories of their parents’ survival. To fill gaps and break the silence, Journalist Karen A. Frenkel researched the void, scouring online and digital archives for information. She and director Marcia Rock tell a Second Generation story, so essential because the first generation is almost gone.

In Family Treasures Lost and Found, we follow Karen on her investigation as she uncovers story after incredible story. Her father refused to talk about going to medical school in Vienna, but Karen learns that Austro-fascists and Nazis they invited from Germany beat and tortured him and his fellow students. Dr. Frenkel also never described his escape from Europe in 1939 enabled by marrying an American tourist. We follow his circuitous journey through Europe, Cuba, Mexico, and finally New York, where he divorces his first wife, a gangster moll. Karen’s mother, Irena Goldberger, spoke selectively to her daughters about her horrors, but did record a thorough oral history for the Fortunoff archive for Holocaust testimonies. Irena reveals in stark detail her horrendous ordeals: at age 16 she ventures out into the streets of Lwów, Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine, to find food for her family; it was too dangerous for her parents to leave the house. After separating from her parents on their insistence, she goes to Tarnów and gets a special stamp on her work card at Gestapo Headquarters. There she passes by vicious Commander Grunow, who randomly shoots Jews. Irena wants to kill him or die from Allied bombs, but instead escapes the Tarnów ghetto by hiding in the bottom of a peasant’s hay wagon. She goes to Germany to work as a slave laborer disguised as a Christian with false papers until Liberation. We also follow the escape from Lwów to Palestine of Karen’s sole surviving grandparent.

These riveting stories of survival, luck, and loss will interest all generations and inspire many to delve into their own family history. We interweave the words of mother and daughter as they recount and interpret events with their unique perspectives. Treasures is visually stunning because Karen inherited a formidable family archive of art, photos and documents from her mother’s refugee grandparents, who escaped to the U.S. in 1941. We also buttress the stories with footage of Karen’s 2016 trip to Europe and archival stills, footage, and animated maps.

Treasures is timely because of the rise of authoritarian regimes worldwide and encourages empathy for the persecuted of the past and today’s 100 million displaced. By uncovering whatever could be found, Karen honored her parents, paternal grandfather, and those lost. She found some solace and learned that it is possible to love people she never met.