He described with irony his transition from "sub-human Jew in Nazi Germany ... to White master race in British colonial Africa".
[2] His father was a German civil servant who received the Iron Cross for his heroism under fire during the First World War.
As German oppression of Jews grew in the 1930s, Fraenkel's mother pleaded with her husband to leave the country but he only agreed after Kristallnacht in 1938.
[3] Fraenkel studied English and history at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and became involved with the anti-apartheid movement.
[3] In his autobiography No fixed abode, he described with irony his transition from "sub-human Jew in Nazi Germany ... to White master race in British colonial Africa".