On-Site Book & Author: “Unearthed: A Lost Actress, a Forbidden Book, and a Search for Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust”

Join author Meryl Frank, in conversation with Museum Board of Trustees member Denise Foy, about her quest to uncover the truth about her family’s Holocaust story – a journey that began with a Yiddish book her aunt forbade her to read.

As a child, Meryl Frank was the chosen inheritor of family remembrance. Her aunt, Mollie, insisted that Meryl never forget who they were, where they came from, and the hate that nearly destroyed them. Over long afternoons, Mollie told her about Vilna, the theater, and above all else, Meryl’s cousin, the radiant Franya Winter. Franya was a celebrated actress in the city before World War II who cast off the restrictions of her Hasidic family and community to play roles as prostitutes and bellhops, lovers and nuns. Yet, there was one thing her aunt Mollie would never tell Meryl: how Franya died. Before Mollie passed away, she gave Meryl a Yiddish book containing the terrible answer but forbade her to read it. For years, Meryl obeyed.
 
Through archives across four continents, by way of chance encounters and miraculous discoveries, and eventually, guided by the shocking truth recorded in the pages of the forbidden book, Meryl conjures the rogue spirit of her cousin with Unearthed: A Lost Actress, a Forbidden Book, and a Search for Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust.

Book signing to follow program.

Non-Members: Museum admission; Members: Free