A Bookshop in Berlin

by Francoise Frenkel

[elysium]

In 1921 Françoise Frenkel, Polish-born Jew, opened the first French-language bookstore in Berlin. After Kristallnacht, she fled Berlin to France. She went to school in Paris and lived there before moving to Berlin so it must have felt like a safe place for her.

We see her difficulties with bureaucracy when starting her bookstore and the danger of being a Jew in Germany. Many advised her not to open a French-language bookstore in Germany in the aftermath of WWI.

What was strange, was her omission of her husband from the book. It is mentioned in the preface by Patrick Modiano that Françoise opened the bookstore together with her husband. In the book, it is never mentioned that she was married. Simon Raichenstein was born in Russia and died in Auschwitz. She writes about wanting to see her mother but not much about other relatives.