BERLIN (AP) — Walter Frankenstein, who survived the Holocaust by hiding in Berlin with his wife and infant children and spent his later years educating young people to keep the events alive in memory, has died. He was 100.
Klaus Hillenbrand, a close friend who wrote a book about Frankenstein, confirmed the death on Tuesday. He said Frankenstein died on Monday. The foundation that oversees Berlin's Holocaust memorial also confirmed that he died Monday in Stockholm.
Frankenstein was born in 1924 in Flatow in what is now Poland but was then part of Germany. Three years after the Nazis came to power, in 1936, he was no longer allowed to attend the town’s public school because he was Jewish.
With the help of an uncle, his mother sent him to Berlin where he could continue his school education, and he later trained as a bricklayer at the Jewish community’s vocational school. He stayed at the Jewish Auerbach’sche Orphanage where he met Leonie Rosner, who would later become his wife.
In an interview with The Associated Press in 2018, Frankenstein described how he witnessed Kristallnacht — the “Night of Broken Glass” on November 9, 1938, when Nazis, among them many ordinary Germans, terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria. They killed at least 91 people and vandalized 7,500 Jewish businesses. They also burned more than 1,400 synagogues, according to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Up to 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps.
Frankenstein, who was then 14, climbed on the roof of the orphanage and saw fire lighting up the city.
“Then we knew: the synagogues were burning,” he said. “The next morning, when I had to go to school, there was sparkling, broken glass everywhere on the streets.”
Starting in 1941, Frankenstein had to do forced labor in Berlin, repeatedly threatened by the danger of being deported by the Nazis.
In 1943, five weeks after their son Peter-Uri was born, he went into hiding with his wife, Leonie, as the Nazis were deporting thousands of Jews from Berlin to Auschwitz.
“We had promised ourselves not to do what Hitler wanted,” Frankenstein told the AP. “So we went into hiding.”
Together with their baby, the couple spent 25 months in hiding in Berlin. A second son, Michael, was born in 1944, during their time on the run. They stayed with friends or in bombed-out buildings.
Up to 7,000 Berlin Jews had gone into hiding, but only 1,700 of them were able to survive. The others were either arrested, died of illness or perished in air raids.
In 1945, when Berlin was liberated by the Soviet Red Army, Frankenstein’s children were among the youngest of a total of only 25 Jewish children who had survived in Berlin.
Before the Holocaust, Berlin had the biggest Jewish community in Germany. In 1933, the year the Nazis came to power, around 160,500 Jews lived in Berlin. By the end of World War II in 1945 their numbers had diminished to about 7,000 through emigration and extermination.
All in all, some 6 million European Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
After the collapse of the Nazis’ Third Reich, the Frankensteins immigrated to what was then Palestine and later became Israel. Eleven years later, in 1956, they moved to Sweden, where they settled for good.
Later in life, Walter Frankenstein returned to Germany several times a year. He often talked to schoolchildren about his life and in 2014, he received Germany’s highest honor, the Order of Merit.
He was also an ardent fan of the Hertha Berlin soccer club. As a teenager he went to its games, and when Jews were no longer allowed to visit the stadium he would listen to reports of matches on the radio. In 2018, Frankenstein became an honorary member of the club with the membership number 1924, his year of birth.
Every time Frankenstein traveled to Berlin in his later years, he brought along the small blue case containing the Order of Merit. Inside the case’s lid, he had attached the first “mark” he got from the Germans: the yellow badge, or Jewish star, that he had to wear during the Nazi reign to identify him as a Jew.
“The first one marked me, the second one honored me,” he said.
FILE - In this Nov. 5, 2018 photo Walter Frankenstein poses for a photo at the orphanage memorial site for an interview with the Associated Press in Berlin. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
RHO, Italy (AP) — No ice is colder and harder than speedskating ice. The precision it takes has meant that Olympic speedskaters have never competed for gold on a temporary indoor rink – until the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games.
In the pursuit of maximum glide and minimum friction, Olympic officials brought on ice master Mark Messer, a veteran of six previous Olympic speedskating tracks and the ice technician in charge of the Olympic Oval in Calgary, Canada — one of the fastest tracks in the world with over 300 records.
Messer has been putting that experience to work one thin layer of ice at a time since the end of October at the new Speed Skating Stadium, built inside adjacent trade fair halls in the city of Rho just north of Milan.
“It’s one of the biggest challenges I’ve had in icemaking,’’ Messer said during an interview less than two weeks into the process.
If Goldilocks were a speedskater, hockey ice would be medium hard, for fast puck movement and sharp turns. Figure skating ice would be softer, allowing push off for jumps and so the ice doesn’t shatter on landing. Curling ice is the softest and warmest of all, for controlled sliding.
For speedskating ice to be just right, it must be hard, cold and clean. And very, very smooth.
“The blades are so sharp, that if there is some dirt, the blade will lose the edge,’’ Messer said, and the skater will lose speed.
Speedskater Enrico Fabris, who won two Olympic golds in Turin in 2006, has traded in his skates to be deputy sports manager at the speedskating venue in Rho. For him, perfect ice means the conditions are the same for all skaters — and then if it's fast ice, so much the better.
"It's more of a pleasure to skate on this ice,'' he said.
Messer’s first Olympics were in Calgary in 1988 — the first time speedskating was held indoors. “That gave us some advantages because we didn’t have to worry about the weather, wind blowing or rain,’’ he said. Now he is upping the challenge by becoming the first ice master to build a temporary rink for the Olympics.
Before Messer arrived in Italy, workers spent weeks setting up insulation to level the floor and then a network of pipes and rubber tubes that carry glycol — an antifreeze — that is brought down to minus 7 or minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 to 19.4 degrees Fahrenheit) to make the ice.
Water is run through a purification system — but it can’t be too pure, or the ice that forms will be too brittle. Just the right amount of impurities “holds the ice together,’’ Messer said.
The first layers of water are applied slowly, with a spray nozzle; after the ice reaches a few centimeters it is painted white — a full day’s work — and the stripes are added to make lanes.
“The first one takes about 45 minutes. And then as soon as it freezes, we go back and do it again, and again and again. So we do it hundreds of times,’’ Messer said.
As the ice gets thicker, and is more stable, workers apply subsequent layers of water with hoses. Messer attaches his hose to hockey sticks for easier spreading.
What must absolutely be avoided is dirt, dust or frost — all of which can cause friction for the skaters, slowing them down. The goal is that when the skaters push “they can go as far as possible with the least amount of effort,’’ Messer said.
The Zamboni ice resurfacing machine plays a key role in keeping the track clean, cutting off a layer and spraying water to make a new surface.
One challenge is gauging how quickly the water from the resurfacing machine freezes in the temporary rink.
Another is getting the ice to the right thickness so that the Zamboni, weighing in at six tons, doesn’t shift the insulation, rubber tubing or ice itself.
“When you drive that out, if there’s anything moving it will move. We don’t want that,’’ Messer said.
The rink got its first big test on Nov. 29-30 during a Junior World Cup event. In a permanent rink, test events are usually held a year before the Olympics, leaving more time for adjustments. “We have a very small window to learn,’’ Messer acknowledged.
Dutch speedskater Kayo Vos, who won the men’s neo-senior 1,000 meters, said the ice was a little soft — but Messer didn’t seem too concerned.
“We went very modest to start, now we can start to change the temperatures and try to make it faster and still maintain it as a safe ice,’’ he said.
Fine-tuning the air temperature and humidity and ice temperature must be done methodically — taking into account that there will be 6,000 spectators in the venue for each event. The next real test will be on Jan. 31, when the Olympians take to the ice for their first training session.
“Eighty percent of the work is done but the hardest part is the last 20 percent, where we have to try to find the values and the way of running the equipment so all the skaters get the same conditions and all the skaters get the best conditions,’’ Messer said.
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Serpentines are set on the ice of the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Workers clean the ice surface during a peed skating Junior World Cup and Olympic test event, in Rho, near Milan, Italy, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Ice Master Mark Messer poses in the stadium where speed skating discipline of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will take place, in Rho, outskirt of Milan, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
