Palárikovo part 3: Viliam & Aranka Frank, Štefánikova Street's ״New״ Residents.

Nestled in the heart of Palárikovo, the house on Štefánikova Street stands as a poignant monument to my family’s narrative. This post, published on the eve of Yom HaShoah (Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day), commemorates Viliam and Aranka Frank, who purchased the house in 1936. It not only highlights their names but also reveals the story of their lives and the mystery they left behind, which tormented their nieces and nephews well into their nineties. Join me on a journey to uncover their legacy - one rooted in curiosity, a duty to honor my family history and our Jewish heritage, and a quest to bring the precious gifts of peace and closure to the Holocaust survivors in my family through genealogical research.

Viliam Frank was my grandfather's paternal uncle, and I feel a special connection to him. When my genealogical journey began, every encounter with my grandfather's cousins ended the same way. Each of them held me tight and made one request to me, before we say goodbye - to find out what happened to 'Uncle Vili'. Their beloved uncle Vili vanished during World War II and his two surviving brothers and sister, and nieces and nephews, never found out what exactly happened to him and his family.

My decision to take on the task of finding out what happened to them played a big part in changing my trajectory into the depths of my genealogical jungle, from uncovering poignant family photos to tracing wartime experiences. Through meticulous genealogical research, connecting with relatives, and scouring archives, I embarked on a mission that shaped my understanding of our heritage.

When I searched for Viliam on Yad Vashem, I discovered that Aranka’s brother, Alfred Moshe Lavon (originally Weiss), who had immigrated to Israel before the war started, had filled out pages of testimony for them. He already passed away before I discovered this, but I reached out to his son, and we forged a new bond over this tragic relation of searching for bits of information regarding the fates of our mutual relatives.

Upon our first meeting, we went together through his father’s photo album, which he inherited. Together we sat to analyze the ages of the children in each photo vs. the genealogical information we had on each part of our families, to identify his and my grandfather’s mutual cousins. We eventually realized that he had the only photos that survived of Viliam and Aranka's daughters, as well as a photo of Viliam and Aranka standing in front of their new house and shop on Štefánikova Street, which was a bit shocking for me, as I discovered an uncanny resemblance between Viliam’s facial features and my own.

Viliam (Zvi) Frank was born on 17 April 1895, in House 221 in Palárikovo, as the tenth child of Herman (Zvi Yehuda) Frank and Ilona (Leah) née Alt. He was the second son they named Viliam, as the first one, the twin brother of my great grandfather Arnold Frank's, died on 8 September 1893.

His niece, Martha Beck née Reich, told me that Vili fought in World War I and returned with some level of shell shock. It makes a lot of sense that he was drafted since the war broke out when he was 19 years old, but so far, I have not been able to locate documents about him from the time of the war.

On 19 February 1928, Viliam married Aranka (Zehava) née Weiss (sometimes mentioned as Zlatonka or Aurelia), who was born on 19 May 1905 in Dolné Ozorovce, 4th among the seven children of Sigmund (Yehoshua) Weiss, and his wife (and cousin), Sali (Sarah) née Weiss. The Weiss family lived in nearby Nové Zámky.

After their wedding, the young Frank couple settled in Palárikovo due to an opportunity offered to Viliam: his father Herman Frank was getting too old and suffered from health problems, and decided to pass on his shop in the village. He decided to move with his wife to Trnava and live with their eldest daughter Henrietta and her husband Ferdinand Reich, who together with their four daughters could help care for Herman.

Herman's older sons had already left Palárikovo - Artur lived in Budapest and owned a factory there; Arnold lived in Nové Zámky and owned a silent movie house; Gabriel had already died, and even the youngest son František had studied mechanical engineering and ran his own factory as well. Viliam, who was still living nearby, was the only candidate left to move into his parents' house and take over his father's store.

Advertisement for Viliam Frank's store, from the collection of Mr. Imrich Szabó

In the 1930 census, Viliam and Aranka live in House 373 of Palárikovo, owned by his father Herman Frank, with their eldest daughter, Erika, who was born on 20 May 1930. With them lived a servant named Julia Klihova.

Viliam and Aranka Frank in the 1930 census

Four years later, on 14 April 1934, Herman Frank passed away in Trnava. His house was then inherited by most of his living children and a few of the older grandchildren as well. Apparently, Viliam’s share of the inheritance allowed him to improve his business with a change of location.

His father’s house was in the outskirts of the village, next to the Christian cemetery. The family expanded in the meantime with the birth of second daughter Judita on 3 May 1935. By purchasing the house on Štefánikova Street from Henrietta Neumann in 1936, his store was now in the heart of the village, and the larger house was more suitable for a growing family.

Viliam and Aranka Frank in front of their house and shop on Štefánikova Street in 1936, from the album of Chaim Lavon

Viliam and Aranka's personal life was improving, but the world around them lost stability with the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany and the rise of anti-Semitic tendencies throughout Europe. In my conversations with Viliam’s niece Martha Beck, she told me that she was present in a situation where Vili and Aranka were trying to decide what to do - Should they stay in Europe and hope for something to change, or emigrate to Israel. The fear of moving to the hot climate of the Middle East and the requirement to learn a new language while in their forties, as well as the thought of downgrading and living modestly as immigrants made them hesitate and postpone decision making, until the window of opportunity closed on them.

World War 2 and the Holocaust

Draconian decrees that limited the lives of the Jews in Slovakia were published and went into effect immediately, Palárikovo was part of the Slovak territory annexed by Hungary, and World War II broke out with the German invasion of Poland. Viliam and Aranka realized that they could no longer stay. They wanted to escape, but of course it was very complicated to move, especially with two little girls.

Imrich Szabó, who grew up across the street after the war, heard from his grandmother that she had suggested to hide one of Viliam & Aranka’s daughters, but Aranka refused to part with her daughters.

Eventually, the entire family fled south and arrived in Budapest, where Viliam's brother Artur took care of any of the family members who managed to get to Budapest. Artur owned the apartment building at Alig Utca 3 in Budapest's 13th district and arranged flats (not sure if in his building or in various hiding places elsewhere) for a few of his brothers and sisters with their spouses and children during the war. According to the memoirs of his niece Elisabeth Falk née Reich, Arthur and his wife Adele themselves survived in one of Raoul Wallenberg's safe houses in Budapest.

In her book “Trust and Deceit”, Vili’s niece Gerta Vrbová, who was there as a teenaged girl, recounted a relatively pleasant time in which the Frank siblings’ families would meet every afternoon for a session of card games. After reading her book, I asked her which of the family members does she remember there exactly, and she mentioned her own parents Max Sidon and Josephine Sidon née Frank, Artur Frank (Josephine’s brother) and his wife Adele née Sidon (Max's sister), Viliam and Aranka with their two daughters, and Arnold Frank and Terezia Frank née Neuhaus, my grandfather's parents, along with their son Tommy.

This pleasant period came to an end abruptly when the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944. On April 1, Arnold Frank and Max Sidon were arrested. They were held in a schoolyard in Budapest. Arnold took advantage of a moment of inattention on the part of the soldiers and with a lot of luck managed to escape and return home, but according to Gerta, her father Max was transferred from there to a Hungarian labor camp where he was eventually murdered.

At this point, the family realized that they had to disappear if they wanted to avoid being caught. Artur operated his contacts throughout Hungary and managed to arrange a number of hiding places for the various family members. His brother Arnold with wife Terezia and son Tommy were hidden in a mine, where a guard was paid to bring them food. Viliam and Aranka were hidden in Gánt, Hungary. From then on, no one heard from them or what happened to them for almost 70 years.

As I mentioned earlier, Vili's nieces and nephews asked me to solve this mystery, and I was finally able to find out the following details:

Aranka (Zehava) Frank née Weiss was caught with her two daughters Erika and Judita during the month of July 1944. According to the documentation in the municipality of Palárikovo they were deported on one of the last trains that left Budapest for Auschwitz-Birkenau (as the Hungarian deportations stopped by the 9th of July), where the three were murdered (this information was supposedly reported from the concentration camp itself).

Erika and Judita Frank, from the album of Chaim Lavon

On 1 November 1944, Vili was captured in Gánt. He was transferred to the Gestapo in Budapest and from there was put on a train to the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, Germany.

Frank Wilhelm in the list of arrivals to Dachau from 7 November 1944, in a transport from Budapest

Viliam arrived on 7 November 1944, was given the prisoner number 122876 and was assigned to the Kaufering subcamp. He endured in appalling conditions until the liberation of the camp on 29 April 1945, but by then he suffered from typhus and was transferred to the Landsberg Municipal Hospital, where he finally passed away on 30 May 1945. On 1 June 1945 he was buried in the Landsberg cemetery.

When I found all of this out, I wanted to arrange for Vili to have a proper gravestone. I contacted the cemetery, but was appalled to get the explanation that according to German law, since no one paid for the ongoing maintenance taxes for the grave (while his family spent decades trying to locate it) someone else had already been buried in the same plot in the 1960s...

After the war

After the war, Jews who survived the Holocaust started returning from camps or hiding places where they had managed to escape the Nazis and their collaborators. Arnold and Terezia Frank returned to Slovakia and arrived in Palárikovo, in search of any surviving members of the Frank family. As time went by and they saw that Viliam and Aranka were not returning, Arnold and Terezia moved into the house on Štefánikova Street. Their son Tommy survived the Holocaust but did not return to Slovakia.

In March 1948, an announcement was published in the Slovak press by the district court, according to which Vili's sister, Kornelia Reich née Frank, had initiated proceedings to recognize Viliam, Aranka, and their two daughters as deceased. The wording of the announcement suggests that Kornelia still did not know what happened to them after May 1942 and thought that they had already been deported to concentration camps. We have no way of knowing today whether the inaccuracy in the details she provided is due to the fact that contact between them had already been lost by May 1942, or she was told so, but this information contradicts questions that Kornelia's two daughters asked me to clarify, and also the more precise information that was later discovered in documents.

After Viliam, Aranka and their daughters were legally declared as deceased victims of the Holocaust in late 1948, ownership of their house was transferred in an orderly inheritance process to the surviving members of the Frank family still in Czechoslovakia: Arnold Frank, his sister Kornelia Reich née Frank, their nephews Rudolf Steckl and Imrich Reich, and nieces Ilona Sturc née Reich and Gerta Vrbova née Sidon. Arnold and Terezia continued to live in the house in good neighborliness with the villagers.

However, under the communist regime that took hold of Slovakia, Arnold and Terezia could not grow old peacefully. Arnold converted his brother's shop into a wood workshop, and supplied firewood and coal to the villagers of Palárikovo. In 1958, about a year after their son Yehuda's visit from Israel together with his wife and son, Arnold was arrested on the false pretext of “endangering the supply chain to the village”. Despite being past the age of retirement, he was imprisoned for a few months.

Understandably, his wife Terezia, who had already survived the Holocaust, experienced this period as frightening, worrisome and extremely stressful. In order not to spend this time alone at home, she stayed with the family of Arnold's niece Klara Somogyi née Reich in Bratislava, until Arnold's release from prison in May 1959.

Just two months later, on 28 July 1959, Terezia died of a heart attack while on a vacation trip to the spa town of Rybáre-Sliač. Arnold knew that there was no point in staying alone as the last remaining Jew in Palárikovo, and realized that he was already in the crosshairs of the communist regime, so he arranged for his wife to be buried not in the abandoned Jewish cemetery in Palárikovo, but in the large Neolog Cemetery on Žižkova street in Bratislava.

Afterwards, he began preparing and obtaining the necessary permits to immigrate to Israel and join his son, in order to spend whatever time he has left with his Israeli grandchildren. On 18 October 1960, Arnold boarded an EL AL Israeli Airlines flight in Prague and immigrated to Israel, where he lived in Kibbutz Sha'ar HaGolan. He lived there for about three years and even received a visit from his sister Kornelia, before passing away on 19 March 1963. He is buried in the Sha'ar HaGolan cemetery.

Kornelia Reich, Arnold Frank, Yehuda Frank with his wife Shoshana and 3 children, and Shoshana's parents near the Sea of Galillee, 1960's

Epilog

And the house on Štefánikova Street? It was left unattended, and according to the owners (Arnold Frank, Kornelia Reich and Gerta Vrbova) it was never sold when Arnold left for Israel.

People from Palárikovo who were commenting on the 1918 photo of the house on facebook claimed that a store operated in the house at a certain era, that there was a tavern there where people came to drink and dance. Others told me that the municipality opened a store there where unemployed people could do something useful, and that Arnold would teach them how to sell, while he was still there. At one point, the yard was used to park tractors, but there’s a disagreement if this was for a long time or just during a flood. We have no accurate information. What we do know is that in 2002, following the expiration of the Slovak law of restitution for Holocaust real estate properties, the municipality treated the house like Holocaust property, and with EU funding - turned it's inner yard into a recycling facility, while a cafe and a gym operated in what was the shop and wood shop before.

Even now, we continue to uncover the intricate history of the Frank family’s two houses in Palárikovo, driven by our curiosity to understand our family story.

Reflecting on that Facebook post—which inspired this blog entry—I am reminded of how much more often Jews from Central European cities receive recognition compared to those from smaller villages. While major capitals and cities like Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava, and Prague boast memorials and monuments, as well as golden ‘Stolpersteine’ that mark the specific houses from which Jewish people were taken to various killing sites, concentration camps or death camps. However, many smaller villages, once vibrant with Jewish life, lack such acknowledgment, attention, financing or activist people to take on such initiatives. Those who survived typically moved to larger cities where the neighbors didn’t know more than they needed to, or emigrated to safer havens, forever altering the demographic landscape and collective memory of those villages.

As I trace distant relations and pieces together stories through old photo albums, my hope is that these efforts breathe life into the memories of those who once were, keeping their stories alive for future generations.

And you?

Whether you are passionate about preserving your family’s stories or just beginning your journey into your heritage, I invite you to join me in exploring the past. If you’re unsure how to start, let me guide you. As a dedicated professional genealogist specializing in Central European Jewish history, my services can help you uncover the rich tapestry of your ancestry too.

Contact me to learn how we can bring your family history to life.