Ruth Frenkel, née Hamburger was born in Bad Kissingen on February 2, 1931. Her parents Heinrich (Hans) Hamburger and Rosa, née Walter owned a butcher’s shop in Grabengasse 9.

In October 1937, the family moved to Göppingen before they emigrated to Arkansas in the United States one month later. Ruth was only six years old at that time. Her sister Ilse who had been born in Bad Kissingen in 1923 had already fled to the USA a year earlier. When her uncle Adolph Hamburger, who had emigrated to the USA before the Nazi Era, had visited his relatives in Germany and saw how their situation in Germany had deteriorated, he had urgently advised them to leave the country. It was also him who got their visa for their emigration to the United States.

After their arrival in the New World, Ruth and her family first lived in New York for one year before they moved to their relatives in McGehee in Arkansas who supported them in the difficult first time of their exile. Ruth Hamburger married Herbert Frenkel who worked as a pharmacist in Little Rock and Conway. In 1964, their daughter Ellen was born who lives in Conway/ Arkansas. Her husband Herbert died in September 2001 at the age of 78.

In 2013, Ruth Frenkel gave an interesting interview to Southern Jewish Institute as a Contemporary Witness (Zeitzeugen-Interview) that can be watched on youtube.