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Josef Fraenkel (b. 11th June 1903 Ustrzyki Dolne, Austria-Hungary now Poland; d. December 1987, London) was an Austrian-British historian, journalist and author of books on Jewish and Zionist subjects.

Life
Josef Fraenkel’s father Moses Fraenkel was mayor of the ‘shtetl’ Ustrzyki Dolne, a community of 4000 inhabitants in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which half were Jews. Moses was an industrialist involved in the extraction of oil in the region. Josef Fraenkel’s mother Tova (Moses' second wife) was a victim of the Holocaust and his siblings were forced to emigrate in order to escape annihilation at the hands of the Germans.

Ustrzyki Dolne, after being conquered and occupied by the Russians at the beginning of WW1, eventually, in 1918, became part of the state of Poland. Josef Fraenkel was sent to school in Vienna and then in Bielsko where he was taught by Michael Berkovitz, who translated Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat into Hebrew. In 1927 he began studying Law at the University of Vienna and was enrolled until 1932, but he did not complete the degree. As a student he was active in the Jewish student association Ivria and became an adherent of the revisionist Zionism of Vladimir Jabotinsky. He worked in Vienna as a writer and published a popular biography of Theodor Herzl.

Fraenkel became an associate of Robert Stricker and with him became one of the founding members of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva in 1936. From 1936 onwards he co-ordinated the European activities of the Joint Boycott Council, which had been founded in the USA for the purpose of organising an economic boycott of Nazi Germany. The German annexation of Austria caused him to flee to Switzerland in March 1938 and from there he moved to Czechoslovakia. After the conquest of that country in March 1939 he fled to Great Britain.

At the outbreak of WW2 he was interned in Huyton, Merseyside, as an ‘Enemy Alien’. After being released he worked for the World Jewish Congress and YIVO and published a review of (contemporary) press articles along with various books on the subject of the Jewish press. He was a member of the Association of Jewish Journalists and Authors in Great Britain and carved out a modest income as a correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and worked from then on, partly in an honorary capacity, for various Jewish organisations and Zionist splinter groups.

Historian Alex Bein, who at this time was in charge of the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, thanked him on the occasion of his (Fraenkel’s) 70th birthday in a testimonial published in the Jüdische Allgemeine for his contribution and support. Fraenkel’s project plans for a Chajes Institute in honour of the Viennese Rabbi Zwi Perez Chajes to be dedicated to the history of Austrian Jews did not come to fruition, nor did the institute planned by Hugo Gold 10 years later; in both instances the project failures were attributable to opposition from the organizers of the Leo Baeck Institute.

In 1967 he managed to obtain written contributions from renowned authors to a collection of articles he published on the Jewish history of Austria. He lacked the funds to have a German language version published.

Fraenkel lost several members of his family in the Shoah. He himself never returned to Austria or Poland. In England he married in 1942 Dora Rosenfeld (1912-1989), daughter of Polish Jews.

Their daughter Ruth Lynn (now Baroness Deech of Cumnor DBE, QC) is a British legal academic and Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords.

Fraenkel's nephew is Maurice Frankel OBE, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information.

Published works

 * Palästina lacht! : Palästinensische Witze. Wien, 1934
 * Theodor Herzl : des Schöpfers erstes Wollen. Wien : Fiba, 1934
 * Dr. Siegmund Werner : ein Mitarbeiter Herzls. Briefe von S. Werner und T. Herzl. Ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Josef Fränkel. Prag : Zionistische Propagandastelle, 1938
 * Robert Stricker. London: Ararat Publishing Society, 1950
 * The Jewish Press of the World. World Jewish Congress, Cultural Department. 1953 und weitere sechs Jahrgänge.
 * Guide to the Jewish Libraries of the World. London, 1959
 * Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941) : Patriot, Judge and Zionist. London : Education Committee of the Hillel Foundation, 1959
 * Mathias Achers Kampf um die "Zionskrone.". Basel : Jüdische Rundschau Maccabi, 1959, zuerst englisch 1954. Mathias Acher, das ist: Nathan Birnbaum
 * Lucien Wolf and Theodor Herzl. London : Jewish Historical Society of England, 1960
 * Dubnow, Herzl, and Ahad Ha-am: political and cultural Zionism. London : Ararat Pub. Society, 1963
 * Simon Dubnow and the History of Political Zionism, in: Aaron Steinberg: Simon Dubnow, the man and his work: a memorial volume on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, 1860-1960. Paris : French Section of the World Jewish Congress, 1963
 * Exhibition of the Jewish Press in Great Britain, 1823-1963. London : World Jewish Congress 1963
 * The Jews of Austria: Essays on their Life, History and Destruction. London: Valentine, Mitchell, 1967