Thomas Frankl

My first impression of Thomas Frankl was that he was not like any Holocaust survivor I had ever seen before.  Not that I had seen a Holocaust survivor in person but almost all of the interviews that I had seen depicted survivors in a serious light.  This was not the case for Thomas.  He came into the room full of life and energy despite his advanced age.  He told us the stories of his and his families Holocaust experiences.  Theirs was an exceptional experience, especially since the members of his immediate family all survived.  While he was telling us this story, Thomas Frankl made jokes, showed us pictures, cried, and laughed.  The fact that he did not express his story in a completely serious or a completely comedic manner, to me at least, made the experiences of his family seem more real.  Yes, they were obviously victims of horrible crimes but that was not all that they were.

I was unable to go to the Adolf Frankl gallery but I did look up all of his pictures that I could find.  I had seen a couple of them in the handouts that Thomas had given us, but those did not begin to do justice to his fathers pieces.  Each one is more disturbing than the last.  However, despite their disturbing nature, these are some of the most powerful paintings I have every seen.  Through them you can feel the tiniest of fractions of the horrors that Adolf and the millions of other victims of the Holocaust had to see and go through.  While obviously we can never truly understand that horror, I do believe that it is important to at least try to do so.