BSRS member Mike Frankl has written a book about his family history, “Three Women, a Rabbi and a Musician from Bohemia” to be published by Troubador Publishing Ltd in March and can now be ordered in store or online. There will be a launch event at Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue in Cambridge on the evening of Sunday 19th April. If you wish to attend the event please contact Mike.
Synopsis
Frankl men, in particular my grandfather, great grandfather and his father before him, seemed to have formed the habit of getting married when quite old, fathering several children and then dropping dead. This left their wives to bring up and secure the survival and the livelihoods of their offspring. These three very strong women are my Three Women.
The Rabbi is Isak HaCohen Frankl. He moved to live and study in Vienna before becoming a community rabbi near Pilsen. Two of his children emigrated to the USA in the 1890s, of whom one planned to study and become a Reform Rabbi.
The musician, see photograph, was Arthur Schick, an enormously talented man who could play several different instruments. He was shot and bayoneted in WWI and ended up playing in a band in a Berlin film studio, where he fell in love with a ballerina.
The book also contains other stories, including my family’s escape from Prague in 1939, one cousin’s travels eastwards to Shanghai and Bombay, and another 14-year old cousin, who made aliyah to Palestine, working in the docks, before becoming a lead agricultural expert on growing bananas in Israel.
The final part describes our family gathering of 65 of us, in the Winery in July 2023, for my 75th birthday weekend.
