“I don’t remember a time when I was not aware of the Holocaust, a time when I was not consumed by it, a time when it was not lodged in my consciousness or deep in my bone marrow.”
With these words, Meryl Frank – a member of the US Holocaust Memorial Councilsince 2022 – begins her book Unearthed: A Lost Actress, a Forbidden Book, and a Search for Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust.
She was not a child of Holocaust survivors, but she was acutely aware of the Holocaust from an early age. Her grandparents arrived in the United States in the early years of the 20th century, leaving behind an entire family, many of them living in Vilna. Through the many stories the author’s Aunt Mollie told her and the photos she pored over while visiting her aunt, the cousins she had never met became so real to her that she felt as if she knew them personally.
Keeping the memories of family lost in the Holocaust alive
Aunt Mollie was committed to keeping the memories of her relatives alive. As she grew up, Frank became more and more absorbed in the stories she heard. Understanding her niece Meryl’s fascination with the stories she told, Aunt Mollie chose her young niece to be the family historian who would pass the stories on to the next generation so that the family that was lost would never be forgotten.
“Over the years, I’ve tried to determine which came first – my obsession with the past or my Aunt Mollie’s unspoken decision to designate me as my generation’s keeper of the family memory. This role is known as the ‘memorial candle,’ or yarzheit, according to Israeli psychologist Dina Wardi.”
While Frank spent hours with her aunt and knew hundreds of details about her cousins’ lives before the war, Aunt Mollie never told her what had happened to them. When she asked questions about their fate, she was told “They didn’t make it... they’re all gone.”
Frank grew up with a strong feeling that something terrible had happened and was afraid that it could happen again. She was especially intrigued by her cousin Franya Winter, who had been a well-known actress in the Vilna Troupe, a Yiddish theater group. While many of the family photos were formal and the cousins looked solemn and awkward, the photos of Franya alone were different.
“Many of the images were postcards and publicity stills for Franya’s stage shows. She seemed to have stepped right out of a Hollywood movie. She was confident and coy, wearing outrageous hats, fur coats, and palazzo pants.” Frank was fascinated by her cousin and wanted to know everything about her.
The author took on the role of the memorial candle with devotion, and as she grew up became determined to learn everything she could about her lost cousins, especially her cousin Franya. She wanted to know how they had lived and how they died.
As an adult, Frank continued visiting her aunt often. When Aunt Mollie was in her 80s, she showed her a book on her bookshelf titled Twenty-One and One and told her that when she died, she wanted Frank to have it. It was written in Yiddish, and the only page written in English explained that the book was “about twenty-one Yiddish actors murdered by the Nazis in Vilna 1941-42.” Her cousin Franya’s picture was in the book beside an essay about her in Yiddish. Aunt Mollie wanted her to have the book and to eventually pass it on to her children. “‘But don’t read it,’ she said.”
Aunt Mollie’s order to never actually read the book made Frank wonder what was hidden in Franya’s story that her aunt didn’t want the family to know. Frank began a journey of research and investigation that took years. She traveled to Lithuania and other countries and met many people along the way, even discovering relatives she had never known about. She learned more and more about Franya and the rest of the family, and eventually did learn the tragic way Franya and some of the others lost their lives.
Unearthed is a fascinating, exciting, and revealing book. It is a significant work of family history and reminds us of the great importance of remembering those we have lost. We must never ever forget the horrendous acts of the Nazis, who murdered six million Jews, Franya and her family among them.
I have read a lot of Holocaust books, but it never gets easier to read them. I was reading Unearthed during Sukkot, and on Friday night, erev Simchat Torah (October 6), I read a particularly difficult section that made it hard for me to fall asleep.
When I woke up the next morning (October 7), I thought about what I had read the night before and thanked God I lived in Israel, where we have our own state and a Jewish army to protect us.
Little did I know what would happen that very morning. I didn’t know that Jewish men, women, and children, even babies and elderly Holocaust survivors, would be murdered by evil Hamas terrorists and others kidnapped and taken captive in Gaza. A few hours later, the sirens began. When I learned the details of the horrendous massacre that had occurred that morning in the Gaza border communities, I put the book aside. How could I read a book about the Holocaust? I simply could not read it in between the continuing reports about the horrors of the present.
Eventually, I did pick up the book again. I reminded myself that while Unearthed has parts that are difficult to read, it is also rich with the author’s personal reflections, the story of her research, and stories of life in Vilna, the Yiddish theater, and so much more. I finished the book.
Unearthed teaches us the importance of remembrance. We must remember the lives of those who are gone and understand their deaths. This is true about our relatives who lost their lives during the Holocaust, and it is true about our brothers and sisters who lost their lives in the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023.
We must keep their memories alive and do everything humanly possible to make sure it never happens again.
Today we are at war with those who want to destroy us, and it is a hard time to be reading books about the Shoah. Yet 80 years later, there are still new stories being told that can help us understand the battle between good and evil. Maybe we can learn new lessons from these stories that will help us cope with our present challenges. I hope so.
Unearthed is a well-researched and well-written book, and an important addition to the still-growing library of Holocaust literature.
- UNEARTHED: A Lost Actress, a Forbidden Book, and a Search for Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust
- By Meryl Frank
- Hachette Books
- 256 pages; $26.10