Giza Frenkel

An art historian and researcher of Jewish culture.

Gizela Frenkel was born to Zygmunt Rozenzweig and Salomea-Sarah Fridman in Wieliczka on 16 September 1895. Her father joined the Fridman family firm, which traded in iron and steel.

In 1913, Giza began studying art history at the Jagiellonian University. In 1919, she continued her studies in Vienna, where she received her doctorate. In his memoirs, her son Zygmunt Frenkel recalls that she considered her studies in Vienna to be the happiest time of her life and retained a sentiment for the Habsburg heritage.

After her studies, Giza married Leon Frenkel, a lawyer; in 1922, the couple moved to Lviv, where they later had two children, Zygmunt and Stella. Leon Frenkel specialized in oil contracts and later bought a brickyard in Zavadiv, near Lviv. The family lived at the intersection of Potockiego and Rejmonta Streets (now 54 Chuprynky Street), occupying the first floor of a three-storey building. They celebrated Jewish holidays and attended synagogue. Her son Zygmunt remembers his mother teaching him to pray Shema Yisrael every night before going to bed. At the same time, however, the family spoke Polish and the children attended a Polish school, learning Hebrew with private teachers.

In Lviv, Giza Frenkel started working at the Ethnological Institute, which had been functioning since 1924 under the direction of Professor Adam Fischer. It was a research institution attached to the Department of Ethnology at the Jan Kazimierz University. She worked there as a volunteer, like eight other researchers at the institute. The institute studied Polish culture inseparably from the cultures of other peoples, including Ukrainian and Jewish, and involved a rather diverse range of researchers, with Jan Falkowski and Leon Popiel. Giza Frenkel was primarily interested in Jewish folk customary and material culture. One of her first focuses, which she followed till the end of her life, was the study of Jewish paper-cuts. She invented a typology of paper-cuts, analyzed the motifs of their images, and popularized the art of paper-cuts in Israel. In 1929, she published her book Wycinanka Żydowska w Polsce (The Jewish Paper-Cut in Poland), published by the Ethnographic Society (pol. Towarzystwo Ludoznawcze).

Giza Frenkel actively promoted Jewish art, regularly contributing under the name Giza Fraenklowa to the Lviv Jewish newspapers "Chwila" and "Opinia" and the ethnographic journal "Lud", published by the Ethnographic Society and edited by Adam Fischer. She wrote articles on Jewish customs regarding Passover, Purim, and other Jewish holidays, on the custom of weddings during the cholera epidemic, and studied the eruv in Lviv. The scholar also reviewed books and articles on Jewish culture and ethnography, including the works of her colleague from the Institute, ethnologist Salomon Czortkower, on race and Jews, as well as the book by collector Maksymilian Goldstein, "Kultura i Sztuka Ludu Żydowskiego" (Culture and Art of the Jewish People). In addition, an announcement has been preserved of her public lecture on Hanukkah customs at the Lviv branch of the Jewish Local History Society (pol. Żydowskie Towarzystwo Krajoznawcze) at 15 Legionów Street (Feller Passage, now prosp. Svobody). This society arose as a result of Jews being not accepted by Polish tourist associations. It organized trips to various tourist sites and published a magazine about interesting locations in the Second Polish Republic.

Giza Frenkel was a member of the curatorium (supervisory board) of the orphanage on Janowska Street.

She also wrote exhibition reviews. Her article about an exhibition of Jewish art held at the Craft Museum in 1933 describes in detail what was on display in each room: fragments of synagogue interiors and objects, a recreated Passover table, a collection of Hanukkah candlesticks, marriage rings and marriage contracts (ketubot). She notes with emotion how the sight of the Shabbat candlesticks conjures up the image of a woman lighting them: "The lady of the house appears before us. Her head is covered with a cap, perhaps one of red velvet embroidered with gold. Above her forehead is a diadem — a sterntichl. Over her festive clothes, she wears a brusttuch (breast ornament - V.M.) — there is such a wide choice of them… she’s tied an apron and, looking from under her half closed eyelids and bending over the burning candles, blesses the Creator for ordering the lighting of the Shabbat light, asks that he rebuild our destroyed shrine, and then sends her own, most intimate supplications to the throne of the Lord" (Chwila, 11 marca 1933). In her article, Giza Frenkel admires the fact that the initiative to organize the exhibition came from a non-Jewish institution, namely the Craft Museum; at the same time, however, she identifies the exhibition's audience as Jews, because "there is not a single Jew in Lviv who would not have visited this exhibition".

In 1939, she wrote a review of an exhibition dedicated to the Passover, which took place in the already opened Jewish Community Museum. This exhibition also featured a recreation of the Seder table for the Passover, with mannequins of people in costumes and with ritual utensils. In addition, the museum exhibited a collection of Passover Haggadot (texts read on the occasion of the Passover feast). The collection included two copies of medieval Haggadot and originals of the 18th century Amsterdam Haggadah, the 17th century Venice Haggadah, and the 19th century Trieste Haggadah. Giza Frenkel was sensitive to the representation of women in the museum and therefore regretted that only men were present at the Seder table, with no women's costume, apparently because there was no one in the museum's collection. That is why the author expressed hope that such a costume would appear in the following year's exhibition; however, these expectations were not met due to the outbreak of the Second World War and the closure of the museum.

After the Soviet occupation of Lviv, the NKVD arrested her husband Leon Frenkel as a Polish officer, while Giza Frenkel along with her children Zygmunt and Stella were deported to the interior of the Soviet Union in 1940. At first they were kept in small settlements in Kazakhstan, in the villages of Kairan and Leninsky Kolkhoz. Communication with Leon Frenkel was cut off, and it was only after the war that the family learned that he had been executed. To support herself, Giza, along with other women, cleaned stables or collected animal droppings for fuel. Nevertheless, even in these grim circumstances, she managed to organize a bar mitzvah ceremony for her son. After the outbreak of the war between the USSR and Germany, the status of Polish deportees improved, and the Frenkel family was able to regain their Polish citizenship and move around more freely. Consequently, they went to Barnaul, where their relative Artur Blatt lived, and Giza was able to get a job as a nurse in a hospital. The family spent the rest of the war there.

After the war, Giza Frenkel returned to her former home, which was in the Soviet Union. Virtually all her family had not survived the Holocaust, so she did not plan to stay in Lviv. Almost immediately, Giza began her academic work again. After spending her first post-war years in Lublin, in 1947 she began working as a custodian of Jewish collections at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. The future museum, which was being created at the Institute, was aimed at saving Jewish cultural artefacts remaining after the Holocaust. During this period, she was interested in the works of Jewish artisans and the costume of Polish Jewish women, and her important publications on this topic were published in the Journal of Jewish Art later.

In 1950, Giza Frenkel moved to Israel and settled in Haifa. There, she worked at the local ethnographic museum, helping to organize exhibitions dedicated to Jewish paper-cuts, including the first exhibition of paper-cuts at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1955. In honour of Giza Frenkel's anniversaries, exhibitions were organized at the Haifa Museum of Ethnography and the Ethnographic Department of the National Museum of Israel in Jerusalem. She was scientifically active until her death in 1984.