Francoise Frenkel

Françoise Frenkel was a Polish-Jewish writer and bookseller who opened the first French-language bookshop in Berlin in 1921. She fled from Nazi Germany in 1939 and sought refuge in France, where she faced persecution and hardship. She managed to escape to Switzerland in 1943, where she wrote her memoir Rien où poser sa tête (No place to rest her head), published in 1945. Her book recounts her passion for French literature, her struggles to survive as a Jewish woman in occupied France, and her encounters with various people who helped or betrayed her. Her book was rediscovered in 2010 and republished in 2015, with a preface by Patrick Modiano. She died in Nice in 1975.