Family Treasures Lost & Found

In this captivating memoir, journalist Karen A. Frenkel unravels her parents’ and sole surviving grandparent’s secret, riveting stories of survival during World War II.

How do you shatter the silence that muffles family stories when those who knew what happened are gone?

In Family Treasures Lost and Found, journalist and daughter of Holocaust survivors, Karen A. Frenkel, investigates her parents’ unspoken WWII stories. Readers accompany Frenkel on her quest and discovery of how her resourceful parents survived on the run from the Nazis. Her research leads to shocking revelations of one parent’s trans-Atlantic escape to Mexico and New York, and how the other eluded capture throughout Eastern and Central Europe with false papers. Having scoured online and real-world archives and visited the relevant cities, Frenkel honors her parents, her sole surviving grandparent, and her lost relatives, who cease to be mere names and who she came to respect and love. The tale Frenkel weaves is both personal and universal, as we begin to feel that her family could be ours.

Frenkel also shares her refugee great-grandparents’ rare and huge collection of stunning oil and pastel portraits, photos, and documents, which were discovered in 1968 in garbage bags. Most Holocaust families lost everything, but these cherished artifacts reveal the Jewish assimilated culture in Kraków and Berlin that the Nazis obliterated. Readers also join Frenkel on her visit to Vienna, Kraków, Tarnów, and Lviv, Ukraine, where the action took place.

Such astonishing tales of survival, resistance, luck, and loss have the power to captivate readers of all generations and backgrounds and inspire them to explore their own family histories.