Death of Edith Frank
- Life in Secret Annex during German Occupation - Auschwitz - Holocaust - WW2

26 September 2022

Category: Nazi Victims

Edith Frank was born on the 16th of January 1900 in Aachen, then part of the German Empire. In 1924 she met Otto Frank and they got married. The couple then moved to a new housing estate in Frankfurt am Main, where Margot Frank, their elder daughter, was born on the 16th of February 1926. Anne Frank was born three years later on the 12th of June 1929. The Great Depression also played a role in the emergence of Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, as a viable political leader in Germany.

Because of business problems and growing antisemitism, the Franks made a difficult decision to leave their country and emigrate to the Netherlands.The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled from Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939. After the experiences in the Third Reich, the family soon felt at home in Amsterdam and the girls enrolled in Dutch schools. They made new friends and despite initial problems with the Dutch language, they became excellent students, especially Margot. In the meantime, Edith’s family, who had been left behind in Aachen, witnessed the violence and destruction of the Kristallnacht which occurred on the 9th – 10th of November 1938, when the Nazi leaders unleashed a series of coordinated violent riots against the Jews throughout Nazi Germany and recently incorporated territories.

World War 2 started on the 1st of September 1939. All of Edith and Otto’s hopes that they would be safe in the Netherlands were dashed by the invasion of the German army in May 1940. The Netherlands became an occupied territory, and it did not take long for the Nazis to begin introduce new anti-Semitic laws and regulations that restricted the lives of Jews. But the situation only continued to get worse and in 1941 Jewish men were arrested during raids and then deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp.

The systematic deportation of Dutch Jews to the death camps started in the summer of 1942. Transports regularly left the transit camps of Westerbork and Vught. On the 5th of July 1942, Margot, Anne’s sister, received a call-up to report for a so-called ‘labor camp’ in Nazi Germany. The next morning, they went into hiding in order to escape persecution.

In the secret annex

In the secret annex, Edith and Otto were to stay with a rebellious Anne and a thoughtful Margot for 761 long days. After 7 days, the Franks were joined by the Van Pels family made up of Hermann Van Pels, Auguste Van Pels, and 16-year-old Peter Van Pels from whom Anne would receive her first kiss. In November, they were joined by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and family friend. It is Anne’s diary thanks to which we know how the Frank family and 4 other Jews lived for more than 2 years in a three-story space entered through a revolving bookcase.

The people in hiding were completely dependent on six helpers – these were Miep and Jan Gies, Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, and Bep and Johan Voskuijl . They were employees and friends of Anne’s father who provided food, clothing, and everything necessary to the 8 people in the Secret Annex between 1942 and 1944. On the 4th of August 1944 the hiding place had been discovered and its 8 inhabitants were arrested. The Dutch police officers were headed by an Austrian SS officer Karl Silberbauer. From a prison in Amsterdam, they were sent to the Westerbork transit camp. On the 3rd of September 1944, the Franks were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

The hell in Auschwitz-Birkenau

While Otto Frank ended up in a camp for men, his wife and daughters were sent to the labor camp for women. Margot, chosen for slave labor, was forced to cut sods or carry stones. When at the end of October 1944, Margot and Anne were put on a transport to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Edith stayed behind at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Edith Frank was 44 years old when she died of starvation and disease in the sick barracks a few days later on the 6th of January 1945, only three weeks before the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Her daughters, who by then were at Bergen-Belsen, did not survive either. Otto Frank survived and was liberated on the 27th of January 1945 when the Soviets entered Auschwitz. In the end, at least Anne’s dreams would come true, and the world learned about her story as well as that of her sister Margot and other members of the Secret Annex. First 3,000 copies of Anne’s book - “Secret Annex” - were published in 1947.

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