Edith Frank

At 44 years old, Edith Frank has this physical status:

Edith Frank (née Holländer), born 16 January 1900 to 6 January 1945), was the mother of Holocaust diarist Anne Frank and her older sister Margot.

During the Holocaust at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where she died from starvation, she was a prisoner.

Early life

Edith was the youngest of four children born in Aachen, Germany, and she was the youngest of four children. Abraham Hollander (1860-1948), her father, was a successful businessman in industrial equipment that was active in the Aachen Jewish community, as well as Edith's mother, Rosa Holländer (1866-1942). Around 1800, the ancestors of the Holländer family immigrated from the Netherlands to Germany. Holländer, Edith's last name, is German for "Dutchman" (literally: "Hollander")). Edith had two older brothers, Julius (1894–1967) and Walter (1897–1968), as well as an older sister, Bettina. Bettina died of appendicitis at the age of 16, when Edith was 14 years old. Julius and Walter immigrated to the United States, with each surviving thereafter. The Holländer family was considered to be religious and adhered to Jewish diet rules. Nonetheless, Edith graduated from the Evangelical Higher Girls' School and completed her school-leaving exams (Abitur) in 1916. She later worked with the family business. She read copiously, played tennis, went swimming, and had a large circle of acquaintances during her free time.

She met Otto Frank in 1924 and married him on his 36th birthday, May 1925, in Aachen's synagogue. They had two daughters born in Frankfurt, Margot, on February 16, 1926, and Anne, born 12 June 1929. The family lived in a Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt-Dornbusch, where they rented two floors at the time Anne was born. With the children in the neighborhood, her daughters spent almost every day in the garden. They came from a variety of faiths, Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. They expressed curiosity in regard to each other's religious holidays. Margot was invited to the communion of one of her family's acquaintances, and the neighbors' children were often invited to the Frank's celebration of Hanukkah. Later, the family migrated to Ganghoferstrasse 24 in Dornbusch's fashionable liberal suburb called the Dichterviertel (Poets' Quarter). Both houses are still exist.

Sturmabteilung (SA) of the Nazi wing marched through Frankfurt am Main in 1932, wearing swastika armbands. These Brownshirts, as they were branded because of their uniform's color, screamed: "When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, everything will go right again." Edith and Otto talked to each other about their fears after hearing this. Because being born in another country was obviously impossible, they were unable to leave their homeland right away.

The appointment of Adolf Hitler to the role of chancellor in Germany on January 30, 1933, prompted the family's emigration to Amsterdam in 1933. Opekta, Otto's Dutch capital, established a Opekta branch. Edith found it difficult to immigrate to the Netherlands. The family lived in confined circumstances and she had a difficult time learning the new language. She stayed in contact with her family and friends in Germany, but she met new people in Amsterdam, the majority of which were fellow German refugees. Edith joined Amsterdam's Liberal Jewish synagogue with her oldest daughter on a regular basis. The Franks used to visit German-Jewish friends to eat together on Friday evenings, and many Jewish holidays were also observed. Edith was an open-minded woman who educated her children in a modern manner. Walter and Julius, both brothers, immigrated to the United States in 1938, and Rosa Holländer-Stern departed Aachen in 1939 to join the Frank family in Amsterdam, where she died in January 1942.

"Edith never felt well in Holland," Anne Frank's cousin Bernhard ("Buddy") Elias has said. Edith was a German student at the University of Kiel, but she missed Germany. She didn't know Dutch very well. She did not feel at home in Amsterdam.

In 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and began persecution of the country's Jews. Edith's children were excluded from their schools, and Otto Frank, her husband, was coerced to leave his businesses Opekta and Pectacon. By handing over to his Dutch colleagues, Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler, who aided the family in hiding when they went into hiding at the company's premises on July 6, 1942, Otto made their businesses look "Aryan."

In Anne Frank's posthumously published diary, the Frank family lived in hiding with four others (their son Peter Van Pels, his wife Auguste Van Pels, and Miep Gies' dentist Fritz Pfeffer). Anne's diary often discusses the disagreements, conflicts, a shared lack of understanding, and the apprehension of her mother, which she wishes to distance herself from. However, she has also portrayed her mother as a compassionate and loyal mother who stands up for her children and shields them against verbal abuses from the outside world. "The period of traumatically passing judgement on Mother is over," Anne wrote in her diary on January 2nd. I've become more aware, and Mother's nerves are a bit more steady. The bulk of the time, I'm able to hold my tongue when I'm upset, and she does too." The diary came to an end three days before they were anonymously tracked and arrested on August 4th, 1944. After arrest in the Gestapo's headquarters in Euterpestraat and three days in jail on the Amstelveenweg, Edith, and others in hiding, they were taken to the Westerbork concentration camp. On the last train to be dispatched from Westerbork to Auschwitz, they were deported from there to Auschwitz concentration camp on September 3rd.

On arrival, Edith and her children were separated from Otto, and they never saw him again. Edith was looking for ways to keep her children healthy. Survivors later described them as an inseparable trio. Edith and Margot were not separated from Anne and Margot on October 30, 30, a new selection was made on October 30th. Edith was chosen for the gas chambers, and her children were taken to Bergen-Belsen. Edith and a friend escaped to another section of the camp, where she stayed through the winter. Edith became sick and was admitted to the sick barracks, where she died of poverty and disease on January 6, 1945, three weeks before the Red Army liberated the camp and ten days before her 45th birthday. Her daughters outlived her by a month.

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