Among her possessions was the original deed poll. On the back, in her elegant calligraphy, she had written:
In the quiet归档 of a London solicitor’s office, a faded manila envelope is labeled simply: Frankenberg, J.P.W. — Change of Name Deed, 1947 . Inside, a single sheet of parchment bears an elegant but firm signature: Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg , and below it, in darker ink, the name she would carry to her grave: Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Carnegie .
The name she chose was Carnegie — after Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate turned philanthropist who had funded thousands of public libraries. To Joyce, libraries were temples of reason, the opposite of Nazi book burnings. More practically, Carnegie sounded Scottish, Protestant, and solidly British. joyce penelope wilhelmina frankenberg current name
On June 12, 1947, Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg swore before a magistrate that she would abandon her birth surname “for all purposes and forever.” The deed was published in the London Gazette . No one objected. In fact, no one noticed.
But the story behind that document is not one of marriage, nor of vanity. It is a story of escape. Among her possessions was the original deed poll
Today, the name Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg exists only on that yellowed document, in the registry of lost identities — a silent witness to how a name can be a disguise, a wound, and a small, defiant act of survival.
In England, Joyce worked as a cook’s assistant, then a nanny, then a secretary for a Jewish relief committee. She never spoke of the Frankenbergs. Her parents were not so lucky: Elias was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942; Helene followed voluntarily and died of typhus in 1944. Joyce learned of their fate in a Red Cross letter delivered on V-E Day, May 8, 1945. Inside, a single sheet of parchment bears an
“Frankenberg is not my name now. But it was my father’s name. And before that, it was no one’s enemy.”