Edith Frank

Edith Frank was born into a German Jewish family in Aachen, Germany. She was the youngest of four children and had a close relationship with her father, who was a successful businessman in industrial equipment. She attended a girls' school and passed her exams in 1916. She worked for the family company and enjoyed reading, tennis, swimming and socializing with friends. She met Otto Frank in 1924 and married him in 1925 at Aachen's synagogue. They moved to Frankfurt, where Otto worked for a bank. They had two daughters, Margot and Anne, who were born in 1926 and 1929 respectively. Edith was a devoted mother who cared for her children's education and well-being. She also helped Otto with his business affairs and was active in the Jewish community. The rise of Nazism and the persecution of Jews in Germany forced the family to emigrate to Amsterdam in 1933, where Otto established a branch of his spice and pectin distribution company. Edith's brothers Walter and Julius escaped to the United States in 1938, and her mother Rosa joined them in Amsterdam in 1939. Edith's sister Bettina had died earlier from appendicitis when Edith was 14. In 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and imposed anti-Jewish measures that restricted the family's freedom and livelihood. Edith's children were removed from their schools, and Otto had to resign his business to his Dutch colleagues Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler, who later helped the family when they went into hiding at the company premises in 1942. The two-year period the Frank family spent in hiding with four other people (their neighbours Hermann van Pels, his wife and son, and Miep Gies's dentist Fritz Pfeffer) was famously chronicled in Anne Frank's posthumously published diary, which ended three days before they were anonymously betrayed and arrested on 4 August 1944. After detainment in the Gestapo headquarters and a prison in Amsterdam, Edith and those with whom she had been in hiding were transported to the Westerbork concentration camp. From here they were deported to Auschwitz on 3 September 1944, the last train to be dispatched from Westerbork to Auschwitz. Edith and her daughters were separated from Otto upon arrival and they never saw him again. On 30 October another selection separated Edith from Anne and Margot. Edith was selected for the gas chamber, but she escaped with a friend to another section of the camp, where she remained through the winter. However, she died from starvation in January 1945, 20 days before the Red Army liberated the camp and 10 days before her 45th birthday.