1899 – 1961, London
Frantisek (Franta), Mike’s father, was born in the town of Louny on 6th January 1899. His parents, Max and Fanni had already produced two daughters, Zdenka and Ruzena and when a son arrived, they gave him the middle name of Victor! The family lived above the general store that Max ran in Louny. The children went to the local Czech language primary school and then to the German speaking secondary school. Franta was a good student, the only subject he received low marks for was Art.The family went to the local synagogue where he had his barmitzvah probably at the beginning of 1912. He enjoyed spending time on the local river swimming and rowing. He won many rowing cups. In December 1914, his grandmother Alzbeta died and the whole family travelled to Teplice for the funeral. Several of his aunts and uncles also lived in Teplice. Shortly after the family returned to Louny, his father, Max collapsed and died in early January 2015 – Franta was just sixteen years old. The Great War had started and he must have known that he would soon get called up into the army and at the same time he would have felt responsibility as the only ‘man’ left in his family. It seems likely that it would not have been practical for Fanni to continue to run the shop on her own, particularly once Franta had been called up into the army. Fanni’s own family was very wealthy and she had several brothers and sisters. I guess that she moved to Prague to be close to them and where they could look after and support her. However, it wasn’t long before Franta had to enlist and travel to Terezin, the nearest garrison town. He was appointed to a machine gun platoon in the Austrian Army. Once his platoon had completed their training, they joined a larger force and began a long march towards Italy. They had a number of minor adventures along the way, but arrived in northern Italy, in the middle of 1918. There they met up with other Czech forces. They discovered that one brigade had taken control of a train which they were planning to drive back to Bohemia. This seemed like a very good plan, and so they joined forces with this unit and slowly travelled back towards Prague. By the time they arrived, the war was nearly over, so their unit was disbanded and his army career was completed.
After the end of the war in 1918 and after Franta was released from his army service, probably in 1920, one of Fanni’s Porges cousins took Franta under his wing and offered him an apprenticeship in his fur trading business. Franta discovered that he was a natural business man. He worked hard, became adept at book-keeping and pricing, as well as developing a skill in the quality assessment of skins and furs and soon became an important part of this business. He began to travel and was sent to Paris and London to buy and sell their products. It was a wonderful time to be in Prague and for a young good-looking man, life in, was full of opportunities and fun. The Porges family were a very extensive Jewish family with branches all over the world. There were several famous Porges Rabbis and leaders in Prague and in Paris in the seventeenth century. Fanni’s father Moritz was a shopkeeper in Prague, his shop was in Vinohrady (Royal Vineyards). His father lived in Brzina where he was an innkeeper, quite a traditional trade for Jews. was the son of Samuel, the son of another and the grandson of Aron Simon, who was born in 1685 in Velké Meziříčí, okres Žďár nad Sázavou, Jihovýchod and who died on August 31, 1756 Libochovice, okres Litoměřice, Severozápad. Many of his descendants stayed living in and around Litoměřice. Prague society looked to Paris and tried to follow the latest fashion trends. It was expected that people would dress well and appropriately for the event that they were about to attend. There were clothes that were the correct attire for morning, afternoon or evening, for the coffeehouse, for the theatre, for the afternoon thes dansants, for the balls that were held in society.
Franta worked hard and played hard! He had many good friends and had many opportunities to meet young women at a variety of dances in the most fashionable places. He was in no hurry to get married and the daughters of his older sister Rujena, his nieces Hana and Milena looked up to him with awe, as the ‘gay’ young bachelor breezed in and out of their young lives. He had opportunities to travel and spent one summer on a cruise down the Danube, visiting the cities of eastern Europe, ending up in Turkey and Greece, and travelling home by train and ship. He often travelled to Karlovy Vary or Marianske Lazne to attend the fashionable spring and summer social gatherings. In 1930, at one of these in the latter town he was introduced to Marta Haurowitz aged 19. Marta was the only daughter of a successful business man Julius Haurowitz. Franta was enchanted with Marta and at last felt as though he had found a person he could consider to be a future life partner. She was no pushover though, she knew her own mind and was feisty and quite prepared to make him work to earn the reward of her favours. Czechs were passionate about their new state, fervently believing in the democratic country set up after the end of the First World War that combined the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia. Czechoslovakia was thriving, but the growth of the Nazi party and Hitler’s ambition to re-unite all of the European German speaking areas was an growing threat.
In response to German troop movements on the border, the Czechoslovak Government called for a partial mobilisation of their army on May 20th 1938. Within a day nearly two hundred thousand reservists including Franta had manned Czechoslovakia’s ‘Maginot Line’. In the Sudetenland, the area close to the German border, the local German-speaking population who had sympathy with the Nazis went into hiding, but the Czech troops were ready and eager to fight. The Czech army was well armed and had substantial and state-of-the-art munitions. Support had been declared from Russia and France, and the troops were very confident. However, Hitler’s invasion of Austria came as a big shock to Czechoslovakia and while Bohemia and Moravia stayed in favour of democracy, Slovakia had become increasingly fascistic. In September 1938, German radio stepped up its anti-Czech propaganda, broadcasting a series of speeches by Hitler. In a meeting between Neville Chamberlain, Britain’s prime minister and Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgarden, not far from the Czech border, Hitler made it clear that if Czechoslovakia did not cede to Germany all areas where Sudeten Germans made up more than 50% of the population, he would order his generals to take them by force. Chamberlain went back to London, consulted and agreed with French President Daladier that Czechoslovakia would have to give in to Hitler’s demands. The Czechs would not agree and continued to mobilise their forces of some eight hundred thousand soldiers. The people were committed not to give in and prepared for war. Eventually, at the infamous Munich Conference in September 1938, Chamberlain and Daladier again met with Hitler and with Mussolini and were persuaded that Hitler would not invade the whole of Czechoslovakia if the Czechs accepted the Nazi claims on the Sudetenland and the subsequent reduction in their borders. However, if the Czechs resisted, neither France or Britain would come to their aid. President Benes realised that it would be suicide to try to fight the German army on their own and persuaded his cabinet that they had no choice. On October 5th 1938 German troops crossed into Sudetenland. It was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. President Benes resigned and sought political asylum in France. The mobilised Czech troops were sent home, the Germans captured the Czech defensive line and all of their armaments. The country shrank even more when Poland invaded the border district of Teschen and Slovakia demanded its independence. Many of the assimilated Jews in Prague believed that things would not turn out too badly, but fortunately Franta and two friends realised that a disaster awaited them and their families, and the three men immediately made arrangements to come to London. to get visas for their families. Franta had been to London several times before this and had set up a small company, so it was easier for him to come into the country. He and his friends rented a small flat in Hendon. He and Marta organised for all the belongings in their beautiful flat – from carpets to cups, eiderdowns to fur coats, dining room table to underwear – to be shipped to London from Podskalska 46, in a lovely area of Prague located between the river and the central shopping area.
Franta was able to get the visas for his family, but it was not so easy for Marta in Prague to get permission to leave. While she was struggling to deal with the Nazi authorities in Prague, he looked for business opportunities. He would have used his contacts in the fur trade and eventually got a contract to supply felt to an army great coat manufacturer. Felt was made from fur and at that time there was a plague of rabbits going on and farmers were being paid to cull rabbits on their farms. He was able to collect the rabbit fur and supply it to a felt maker. Unfortunately, his workshop was bombed and he had to try a different business. He managed to land a contract making trousers for the Czech troops that had gathered in the UK under the command of the Czech Government in exile.
Marta, Hana and George finally arrived in the UK in late August 1939. They moved into the flat in Hendon, while Franta’s two comrades moved out. During the war years they moved around quite a lot spending time in Orpington and then during the Blitz they moved to Beaconsfield, North West of London and away from the worst of the bombing. Later they moved back to North London, renting a house in Waverly Grove in Finchley. While in London during the war, Franta volunteered to be part of the Home Guard, serving with the anti-aircraft units on Hampstead Heath.
At the end of the war, Paul Verba, Franta’s nephew was posted with the American troops in Prague acting as a translator. He located Fanni, his grandmother and Franta’s mother in hospital. Having survived Terezin, she was very sick and when Paul told her that two of her daughters and their husbands had died in the camps, she gave up the will to live and died in June 1945.
The family returned to Czechoslovakia during the summers of 1946 and 1947, but gave up the idea of a permanent move back, when the Russians took over the company. In late 1947, Franta was encouraged by a Porges cousin to consider moving to New York. He decided to go and have a look and after crossing the Atlantic by ship he walked into a hotel he had been recommended. The sign above the reception desk said “No Jews – No Ni…rs” He turned around went back to the ship and came back to the UK. In 1948 he was able to buy a house in Finchley and 57, Beechwood Avenue became the Frankl family home where Mike was born in July 1948. Franta worked extremely hard all his life, he was also a heavy smoker. He helped people whenever he could, in particular looking after his nephew and niece, Paul and Eva Verba, and helping out his sister Ruzena, after her husband died in November 1941. After the war Franta managed to successfully get back into the fur trading business. He enjoyed travel and in 1949 drove the family in their tine car to Adelboden in Switzerland for a summer holiday. Hana and George sat in the back with Mike in a travel cot on their laps – with a string tied across the car with drying nappies hanging down. Each year they went to a different location in Switzerland or Austria. He was a great believer in the English Public School system and insisted that both George and Mike were given this opportunity. He was traditional in his view of girls’ education and was not so interested in helping Hana get to Art School which was her ambition. Hana became very involved in the young adult group at west London synagogue where she met Joseph Ephraim (Jeoff) Samson, they became engaged and married in December 1955. Fanni’s sister Berta Wambach, who had survived the war years by being hidden with a family in Holland came to the wedding. In May 1956, he, Marta and Mike were returning from a weekend away in Bournemouth with Marta driving and on the way to have lunch with Hana and Jeoff. There was a terrible car accident and the car hit a tree. Marta was killed and Franta had a damaged leg. It was a horrible tragedy. After Marta’s death, Franta asked Hana to come home to look after him and Mike, but that was not sustainable and after a few months, he employed a house keeper. Mike was sent to school as a weekly boarder. Franta decided to marry Mila Pick, a Czech friend of the family. They sold the house to cousins Franta and Milena Mautner and moved to a flat in Finchley Road, near Frognal in Hampstead. By this time George was living with them studying engineering at Battersea College of Technology. After Mike completed his Barmitzvah he was sent to Sutton Valence School in Kent. At the end of his first term there. The male Frankl family heart weakness finally caught up with Franta and he had a major heart attack just after Christmas and died very quickly on December 27th.
