Naftaly Aronovich Frenkel (; 1883 in Haifa – 1960 in Moscow) was a Soviet security officer and member of the Soviet secret police. Frenkel is best known for his role in the organisation of work in the Gulag, starting from the forced labor camp of the Solovetsky Islands, which is recognised as one of the earliest sites of the Gulag. Origins Naftaly Frenkel's origins are uncertain. The given name Naftaly is of Hebrew origin, as are the roots of the patronymic Aronovich. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn called him a "Turkish Jew born in Constantinople". Another described him as a "Hungarian manufacturer". Yet another claimed that Frenkel came from Odessa. Yet more said he was from Austria, or Palestine. His prisoner registration card states clearly that he was born in Haifa, then part of the Ottoman Empire. From Haifa he made his way (perhaps via Odessa, perhaps via Austria-Hungary) to the Soviet Union where he described himself as a 'merchant'. Finnish communist Arvo Tuominen, who met Frenkel in 1933, claimed in his memoirs that Frenkel was related to the , a prominent Finnish-Swedish family of Germanic origins (see, for instance, Erik von Frenckell) and that he spoke Swedish. Arrest In 1923 he was arrested for "illegally crossing borders", a label which covered smuggling or for being a merchant who was too successful for the Soviet Union to tolerate. He was sentenced to 10 years' hard labor at Solovki. The Solovetsky Islands, in the White Sea, came to be known as the "first camp of the Gulag". Together the islands were known as 'northern camps of special purpose': Severnye lagerya osobogo naznacheniya or SLON. In Russian slon means 'elephant'. "The name was to become a source of humour, of irony and of menace." From prisoner to guard He rose rapidly from prisoner to staff member on the strength of his proposal to the camp administration that they link inmates' food rations to their rate of production, the proposal known as nourishment scale (шкала питания). How exactly Frenkel transformed himself from prisoner to camp commander is also mysterious. The story goes that when he arrived at the camp he found shocking disorganisation and waste of resources (both human and material): he promptly wrote a precise description of what exactly was wrong with every one of the camp's industries (including forestry, farming and brick-making). He placed the letter in the prisoners' 'complaints box' whence it was