91-Year-Old Survivor Fights Hate with Her Story

Rina Frankel has a message for anyone who thinks hate can win: it didn't then, and it won't now.

The 91-year-old Cleveland grandmother survived the Holocaust, forced labor in Siberia, and the loss of her father before she was even a teenager. Now she's being honored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for decades of making sure those stories never fade.

Frankel was just 5 years old when World War II began in Poland. A Nazi officer once grabbed her braid and pushed her down, accusing her of running to warn her parents. Her mother's quick thinking during a nighttime raid saved her life when she pretended young Rina was herself.

Her family endured forced labor in Siberia under brutal conditions. When the Soviet Union joined the Allies, they were freed and moved to Uzbekistan. Her father, weakened from the freezing Siberian work camps, died shortly after their liberation.

In 1949, Frankel moved to Israel where she met her husband Samuel, an Auschwitz survivor who lived to 96. The couple settled in Cleveland in 1954, building a new life together. They raised five children and now have many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Why This Inspires

Frankel could have chosen silence after experiencing unimaginable trauma as a child. Instead, she chose to speak. For decades, she has shared her survival story with anyone who will listen, turning her pain into purpose.

Her timing matters now more than ever. FBI data shows more than 850 anti-Jewish hate crimes were reported in November 2023 alone, the month after the Hamas attack on Israel. While numbers have dropped since, they remain far higher than a decade ago.

Frankel sees her storytelling as an act of defiance. "This is our way of saying the Nazis didn't succeed," she said while preparing her speech for the museum's Cleveland luncheon. "They didn't succeed."

At 91, she has no plans to stop sharing her story.

Her life proves that survival itself can be resistance, and that one person's voice, raised again and again, can light a path through the darkness.