Neftali Frankel was born on December 26, 1921 in Tarnow, Poland, the eldest of four children. Neftali was 18 years old when World War II began. Soon after the Nazi occupation, restrictions were enforced on the Jews. They were banned from public places, such as parks and movie theaters. Restrictions escalated to violence, and, in 1942, the Jews of Tarnow were forced into a ghetto. Soon after, the deportations to concentration and extermination camps began. Neftali’s mother and two sisters were rounded up to be sent on one of these transports. Neftali’s father begged the commandant in charge of the transport to let them go. The commandant agreed to release his wife but forced him to choose one daughter to go free. Faced with an impossible decision, but believing the oldest would have a better chance of survival, he chose to save his youngest daughter, along with his wife. Neftali’s sister was sent with the others on the transport to Auschwitz, where she was killed in a gas chamber.
On October 23, 1943, the Nazis liquidated the ghetto and sent the Frankel family, along with hundreds of others, to concentration camps for a short time until they were forced onto cattle cars and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Neftali’s mother and sister were killed in the gas chambers upon arrival. Neftali and his father were tattooed and put to work carrying large rocks and cleaning rifles. As the war drew to a close, they were forced on a death march to Dora concentration camp. They were then moved to Bergen-Belsen, where they were finally liberated on April 15, 1945.
Neftali recuperated after the war in the United States and later moved to Mexico City, where he had relatives. In 1947, he married Edith, a distant cousin, and together they worked for relatives in the hotel business. During the early years of their marriage, they ran a hotel for elderly people and later opened a store that sold school supplies which evolved many years later into a paper packing company. Neftali and Edith joined their daughter, Felicia Rubin, in El Paso in 2003. Neftali died on November 14, 2005.