By Erica Cox
Special to The PREVIEW
There are many stories of harrowing ordeals from the holocaust that are still largely untold. Some survivors will tell it all. Some never tell. Their stories are powerful tools for making sense of the past.
From daring escapes to finding the courage to survive, these narratives illustrate not only humanity’s depravity, but that hope that can be found even in the darkest of times.
Archuleta Genealogy Society’s guest speaker, Frank Fristensky, along with his parents and two younger brothers, defected from Communist Czechoslovakia to Switzerland in 1953. It was there, to his surprise, he discovered his maternal grandparents were Jewish. Many of Fristensky’s relatives perished at Auschwitz.
In 1996, Fristensky immigrated to the United States with his wife and three children, making Durango their home. He has returned to Central Europe frequently and traveled around the U.S. to gather as many details as possible of his mother’s incarceration at the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia.
Fristensky’s presentation, “The Story Never Told,” will take you back to WWII Europe.
Please join us for the monthly meeting of the Archuleta Genealogy Society on April 1 at 10 a.m. at the Methodist Church on Lewis Street in Pagosa Springs.
