Alona Frankel

Alona Frankel was born in 1937 in Kraków

Alona Frankel was born in Kraków, Poland, in 1937 as Ilona Goldman. During World War II she was in the Lwów Ghetto with her parents. She later hid in a village without them and then rejoined them in hiding.

After the war the family returned to Kraków, and in 1949 it immigrated to Israel. Frankel studied art at the Avni Institute.

She began her career illustrating children's books by other writers. In 1975 she published Sir ha-Sirim, a book on toilet training that became a bestseller and appeared in English as Once Upon a Potty. She went on to write and illustrate dozens of children's books, many of them translated.

Her first book for adults, the memoir Girl, won the Sapir Prize in 2005. She followed it with Teen in 2009 and Woman in 2012. In 2014 she received the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works.

She was married to the artist Zygmunt Frankel, and they had 2 sons, Ari and Michael. In 2025 she lit a torch at the Holocaust Remembrance Day closing ceremony at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot.