A Granddaughter’s Obsession Leads to Painful Discoveries–and Blessings

Novelist and short story writer Clarice Lispector has said that “To write is to try to understand, to try to repeat the unrepeatable, to write is also to bless a life which has not been blessed.” Frida: My Long-Lost Grandmother’s War is a riveting book about a granddaughter’s quest to trace her beloved father’s mother’s life and fate. Frida Grünfeld perished in the Holocaust in April of 1945 at age 36, in Ravensbrück, and what her granddaughter Nina discovered about Frida’s existence, through years of research, recovers the story of one Jewish woman’s fight for survival, through a mix of history, biography, and memoir. In her searches, she discovered that her grandmother worked as a prostitute, drank too much, and was known to be loud, quarrelsome, and obscene in her response to patriarchy and fascism. Born in 1906, she was an unwed, pregnant, social outcast in her native Czechoslovakia, who wandered from town to town, escaping the law in the 1930s and early 40s. Thanks to her granddaughter’s work, we are able to learn, better imagine, and understand a diversity of women’s experiences before and during the Second World War.

The younger Grünfeld, is a filmmaker and professor of film directing at University of Inland Norway and the founder of Coexista.com, an initiative focused on attitude-shaping and charitable work—she also hosts the podcast Akk Oy Vey: The Jewpod, which explores culture from a Jew-ish perspective. When she first published Frida in Norway, it received rave reviews. Now Frida: My Long-Lost Grandmother’s War, is finally available in English.

NL: Frida—whom you never knew—has been on your mind since you were a little girl. What made you take the leap from thoughts to research?

NG: As you say, this has been a lifelong project for me—if not to tell Frida’s story in the form of a book, then at least to uncover who she was and what became of her.

The decision to finally write this book came after I made a documentary film about my father, Berthold, in 2005. After World War II, as an orphaned boy raised in the Jewish orphanage in Oslo, where he had been placed after leaving Czechoslovakia on a Kindertransport in 1939, he pursued an education, got married, and had three children.

In the 1970s, he became a public figure in Norwegian society, with the national newspaper Dagbladet giving him the title “Norway’s sexologist.”

When I made the film about him in 2005, I thought it would focus on the welfare state in Norway as seen through his eyes. Instead, it turned into an episode of the TV format ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, where we traveled back to Bratislava to search for traces of his family. What we found was overwhelming and quite painful, especially for him. Two years later, my father passed away.

It wasn’t until ten years later, in 2017, that I decided to continue searching for Frida. By then, more archives had been digitized, and access to people working in those archives was much easier than it had been a decade earlier. At that point, it became possible to trace Frida’s life from cradle to grave.

NL: Frida has now been translated into nine languages, including the most recent version in English. Did one specific language mean something unique to you?

NG: The German translation was particularly significant because the translator, Ulrich Sonnenberg, is the most meticulous translator I’ve ever encountered, with immense integrity. And being translated into German was a profound experience—not only because it’s a large book-reading market but also because Nazi Germany, in a way, is the antagonist in the story. Reaching this audience feels meaningful, as does connecting with Central European readers in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. These are countries that have been reluctant to acknowledge their complicity in the Holocaust. It’s moving to attend literary festivals, where they, for instance, explore a Jewish culture that no longer exists in their countries.

NL: In what ways did this project deepen your own understanding of the Holocaust? Was it challenging to balance the political history of the time and the social history represented by your grandmother’s individual life?

NG: My primary motivation was to uncover the story of a woman—my father’s mother—and to find out what happened to her. As we gradually managed to trace her through the archives, it struck me more and more how her life reflected the living conditions of women at the time, particularly those on the lowest rungs of society.

As a Hungarian-speaking Jewish minority in the newly established state of Czechoslovakia, she was extremely vulnerable. The military and security police monitored people like her, fearing they might be spying on behalf of Hungarian nationalists. The regular police ensured that, as a street prostitute, she did not disrupt law and order. Health authorities required her to undergo regular medical examinations and invasive treatments for venereal diseases, which were epidemic at the time. On top of this, she was a woman in a strict Catholic patriarchy.

Traditionally, many Holocaust narratives have focused on men, often resourceful ones, who survive. The truth, however, is that most people were poor and were killed—and that half of them were women, including a significant number of children.

NL: It took your father Berthold a long time to be willing to open up about the little he knew about his mother, because her life-story, and thus his origin story, was shrouded in shame and abandonment. But you also tell us that “Gradually, he began to speak of her more frequently, and with each retelling, she evolved into a symbol of oppositional resistance.”

NG: My father’s initial reaction when we uncovered the documentation of Frida’s life was that we should cover it up and not let anyone know. However, it didn’t take long for him to be convinced otherwise. I told him: “You have stood for openness and tolerance your entire life. How can others come forward if you don’t dare to?” He chose to lead by example publicly, which resulted in a flood of grateful responses.

Gradually, he managed to reconcile with the woman who had left him when he was seven days old. Over time, it was almost as though he began to hallucinate a little. He transformed her aggression and anger—often expressed under the influence of alcohol—into signs of political opposition. Admittedly, she did and said things that were very dangerous at the time, but I’m uncertain if they stemmed from political conviction. Most likely, she didn’t fully grasp the implications of what she said and did.

NL: Because of the challenges you faced in finding any photos of Frida, you use research mixed with imagination to recreate her life. For example, in the chapter titled “Slave,” you depict Frida on board the cattle train car from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück, and you surmise what it was like. Did the poetic license needed feel like a gift or a burden in this work of “re-creation”?

NG: After reading countless memoirs from survivors, one recurring theme stands out, particularly in the stories of women: having allies was crucial to survival. You needed someone to collaborate with to navigate the daily challenges and dangers. Additionally, emotional connection was essential—someone to provide comfort and recognition, someone you could care for. Research supports this, showing that those who were isolated were far more vulnerable. When it comes to Frida, I imagined her as a woman who likely found herself alone. Other women might have quickly recognized her for who she was and kept their distance. My immediate thought was that she was rejected and perhaps even excluded. Given her experiences, I also considered that she might have rejected others—that she wasn’t receptive to care or trust, and that she had become so disillusioned that she kept everyone at arm’s length. At the same time, I thought that her tough exterior might have made her better equipped than most to endure the humiliations that awaited in the camps. Perhaps her potential cynicism was so apparent that she was assigned roles requiring her to treat others poorly, or that out of sheer pragmatism, she carried out unspeakable orders. Who knows? This could be one explanation for how she managed to survive as long as she did.

There is no documentation or evidence to support these speculations, but they are thoughts I have had—just as I’ve also considered the opposite. If my father’s storytelling gift and charisma came from her, it’s conceivable that she used these traits even in the darkest moments.

NL: You have said that in your journey to (re-)create a coherent narrative about Frida, you gradually realized that understanding her was inseparable from understanding yourself.

NG: I’ve become a 58-year-old woman. Frida didn’t live past 36. She was robbed of life at an age closer to my daughter Paula’s age than mine. I’ve been fortunate to grow up in a time marked by peace, democracy, and progress. That wasn’t the case when Frida lived. I’m uncertain whether my daughter Paula will live in a society as free of conflict as the one I’ve known.

Getting to know Frida’s life and fate has made me reconsider my own life from a different perspective. In a way, she has prepared me for a much harder life than the one I’ve lived so far. It might sound sad, but another way to view it is to take a realistic approach.

NL: Did you ever want to throw in the towel and give up your search and the project of writing the book, and what made you keep going?

NG: I don’t think so, at least not as far as I can recall. Quite the opposite, actually. When Zuzana, my brilliant researcher, and I started uncovering everything we eventually found, I felt almost like a bloodhound. It was incredibly exciting.

NL: Frida was first published in Norway in 2021, and you mention in an addendum dated August 2023 that you continue to hear from readers and the occasional additional archival discovery finds its way to you. You say, “the search doesn’t come to an end.”

NG: Genealogy has become something of a pastime. I’ve received several inquiries from readers who, on their own initiative, have conducted searches about my family. Perhaps they wanted to contribute and help, or perhaps they were simply curious. Several of them have found documents that I had also discovered but that didn’t pertain to my family. That’s part of conducting this kind of investigation—you uncover so many leads, and many of them turn out to be dead ends. But I’m certain there’s still information out there that I haven’t found yet, and perhaps others will uncover it for me. Maybe the release of the English edition will help make that happen.

NL: In retrospect, can you identify a particularly joyous moment in the journey of this project, and on the flip side, a time that stood out as more painful or sad than others?

NG: I think writing myself into the gas chamber and describing what Zyklon B did to the body was one of the most difficult moments. It felt as though a part of me died with her. But of course, I didn’t—I live on. Without Frida, I wouldn’t exist. Even though my father was almost certainly not a planned child, nor conceived in love, she nonetheless brought him into this world, which in turn led to my existence. For that, I am grateful to her.

Nina B. Lichtenstein is the author of Out of North Africa: Sephardic Women’s Voices and Body: My Life in Parts (forthcoming).