Not every Holocaust survivor can have a book written about them. There are survivors about whom very little information remains. They did not tell their stories, for reasons that they kept private.
And yet the legacy of the past that Rabbi Yitzchak Frankfurt left to his daughters evokes a shiver of emotion.
Tzitzit (ritual fringes worn by religious Jewish men).
Not white, nor made of a spectacular smooth fabric.
Colourful tzitzit, with an unknown story hidden behind them.
Yitzchak Frankfurt was born in Tarnow, Poland. At some point, he fled to the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, he made himself the colourful tzitzit, probably from some fabric he found.
What did he go through, alone, without his family who perished in the Holocaust? What helped him survive? No one will ever know, because he never told his story to his daughters.
What they do know is that after the war their father came to Bergen-Belsen and there he married his wife – their mother, Leah.
They also know that his family perished in the Holocaust because he came to his hometown and was photographed there at a mass grave, with a note on which he commemorates the names of his family members who were murdered there: his father, his mother, his brother and his two sisters, may G-d avenge their blood.
Thank you to Mrs. Asher who reached out to Ganzach Kiddush Hashem and commemorated her father’s story in writing and photographs.
Yitzchak Frankfurt next to the mass grave in his hometown
