Josef Fraenkel, a leading Zionist, biographer of Theodor Herzl and an internationally known journalist for much of this century, died here last week at the age of 84.
He was regarded as the foremost authority on Herzl’s early life and as a storehouse of Jewish memories. In 1938, as Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent in Prague, Fraenkel reported the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia and its immediate effect on the Jewish community there.
He was a member of the Zionist Revisionist movement, but broke with its leader, Zeev Jabotinsky, when the latter seceded from the World Zionist Organization in 1935. Instead, Fraenkel supported the moderate Revisionist Meir Grossman, founder of the Jewish State Party, which remained inside the WZO fold.
Fraenkel was born in Ustryzki, Poland, in 1903. He grew up in Vienna and fled to Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss in 1938, only to be confronted again by Nazi invaders. After the fall of Prague, he came to England, with the help of JTA’s London correspondent, Samuel Goldsmith.
He spent more than 30 years working for the British section of the World Jewish Congress. He founded the Association of Jewish Journalists in London and edited an anthology of writings by Austrian Jews.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
