Join the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and Rosa Luxemberg Foundation for a film screening of

Family Treasures Lost & Found

This documentary tracks journalist Karen A. Frenkel investigates her parents’ unspoken WWII stories. She knew little about their lives before and during the Holocaust, but her detective work leads to astonishing revelations of her parents’ and one grandparent’s journeys to freedom. Karen shares steps in family history research such as using digital and real-world archives to fills gaps in what she was told. A family archive of portraits, photos, documents, and artefacts also reveals the cultural life of pre-war urban assimilated Polish Jews. The process deepens Karen’s appreciation for her relatives’ resistance to fascism, luck, altruism, and the reasons for their silence. She honours her parents, sole surviving grandfather, and lost relatives, who cease to be mere names. Ultimately, Karen ensures that memories of a vanished culture will endure and shows why filling in the blanks of lives lost is important not only to her, but to the history of the Jewish people and society as a whole.

Learn more about the film here

The screening will be followed by a virtual Q&A with Karen A. Frenkel and director Marcia Rock.

19 September 18:00

RSVP is essential here