Margot Frank

Margot Betti Frank, named after her maternal aunt Bettina Holländer (1898–1914), was born in Frankfurt, Germany, to Jewish parents, Otto and Edith, and lived in the outer suburbs of the city with her parents, Otto Frank and Edith Frank-Holländer, and also her younger sister Anne Frank, during the early years of her life. [4] Edith and Otto were devoted parents, who were interested in scholarly pursuits and had an extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read. At the time her sister Anne was born, the family lived in a house at Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt-Dornbusch, where they rented two floors. Margot and Anne played almost every day in the garden with the children in the neighborhood. They all had different backgrounds; Catholic, Protestant or Jewish. They shared a curiosity about each other's religious holidays. Margot was invited to the communion celebration of one of her friends, and the neighbors' children were sometimes invited to the Frank's celebration of Hanukkah. [5] In 1931 the family moved to Ganghoferstrasse 24 in a fashionable liberal area of Dornbusch called the Dichterviertel (Poets' Quarter). Both houses still exist.[6]

In the summer of 1932, the Nazis' paramilitary wing – Sturmabteilung (SA) – marched through the streets of Frankfurt am Main wearing swastika armbands. These Brownshirts, as they were called because of the color of their uniforms, loudly sang: “When Jewish blood spurts from the knife, things will go well again”. Upon hearing this, Anne's parents Edith and Otto discussed their concerns with each other. It was impossible for them to leave their homeland immediately because making a living abroad was of course an issue.[7]

Margot attended the Ludwig-Richter School in Frankfurt until the appointment of Adolf Hitler on January 30, 1933, to the position of chancellor in Germany brought an increase of anti-Jewish measures, among which was the expulsion of Jewish schoolchildren from non-denominational schools. In response to the rising tide of anti-semitism, the family decided to follow the 63,000 other Jews who had left Germany that year and immigrate to Amsterdam in the Netherlands.[8] Edith Frank and her daughters moved in with her mother in Aachen in June 1933 until Otto Frank found accommodation in Amsterdam. Margot and her mother left Germany to join him on December 5, 1933, followed by Anne in February 1934. Margot was enrolled in an elementary school on Amsterdam's Jekerstraat, close to their new address. Despite initial problems with the Dutch language, Margot went on to become a star pupil. She achieved excellent academic results until an anti-Jewish law imposed a year after the 1940 German invasion of the Netherlands demanded her removal to a Jewish lyceum. There she displayed the studiousness and intelligence which had made her noteworthy at her previous schools and was remembered by former pupils as virtuous, reserved, and very obedient. Margot had a large circle of friends and enjoyed rowing and playing tennis in her spare time. In her diary, Anne recounted instances of their mother suggesting she emulate Margot, and although she wrote of admiring her sister in some respects for being handsome and clever, Anne sought to define her own individuality without role models. Margot is also shown to have a much better relationship with at their mother, and had a much more modest and tolerant nature as opposed to Anne, who was determined and often spoke her mind.

Although her sister Anne also took Chinese classes at a later point, Anne was, like her father, not as much interested in the Jewish tradition as Margot. Margot followed the example of her mother, who became involved in Amsterdam's Liberal Jewish community. She took Hebrew classes, attended synagogue, and in 1941 joined a Dutch Zionist club for young people who wanted to immigrate to Palestine to found a Jewish state, where, as Anne Frank described in her diary, she wished to become a midwife.[9]

On July 5, 1942, she received a notice to report to a labor camp and the next day went into hiding with her family in a secret annex of a house. They were later joined by four other Jewish refugees and remained hidden for two years until they were betrayed on August 4, 1944.[10]

Stolperstein for Margot Frank at the Pastorplatz in Aachen, Germany

Along with the other occupants of the hiding place, Margot Frank was arrested by the Gestapo on 4 August 1944, and detained in their headquarters overnight before being taken to a cell in a nearby prison for three days. From here they were taken by train, on 8 August, to the Dutch Westerbork concentration camp. As the Frank family had failed to respond to Margot's call-up notice in 1942 and had been discovered in hiding, they (along with Fritz Pfeffer and the Van Pels family) were declared criminals by the camp's officials and detained in its punishment block to be sentenced to hard labor in the battery dismantling plant. They remained there until they were selected for Westerbork's last deportation to Auschwitz on September 3, 1944. Margot and Anne were transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on October 30, where both contracted typhus in the winter of 1944.

Margot Frank died in February or March 1945 at the age of 18 or 19 due to typhus. A few days later, Anne died due to the same illness. Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper and her sister Lientje buried them together in one of the camp's mass graves; in August 1945, once she came back to the Netherlands and recovered from typhus, Janny wrote to Otto Frank and informed him that both of his daughters had died.

Otto Frank was the only one to survive out of the eight people who went into hiding. When he returned to Amsterdam he was given Anne's diary by Miep Gies, which he later published as a remembrance to her. Along with Anne, Margot Frank also wrote a diary during their time in hiding (Anne mentioned her sister's diary in her own) but Margot's diary was never found.[11] However, many authors wrote fan-based diaries of Margot such as the novel The Silent Sister by Mazal Alouf-Mizrahi. Letters written by both Frank sisters to American pen pals were published in 2003.[12] Buddy Elias (1925–2015) was Anne's first cousin and last surviving close relative.

• Anne Frank. The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition, edited by David Barnouw and Gerrold Van der Stroom, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, compiled by H. J. J. Hardy, second edition, Doubleday, 2001.
• Willy Lindwer. The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, Pan Macmillan, 1989.
• Jeroen De Bruyn and Joop van Wijk. Anne Frank: The Untold Story. The hidden truth about Elli Vossen, the youngest helper of the Secret Annex, Bep Voskuijl Producties, 2018.
• Rubin, Susan Goldman. Searching for Anne Frank: Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa, Abrams, 2003.
• Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold. Anne Frank Remembered, Simon and Schuster, 1988.

• Portrait of Margot Frank told by her school friends (English Captions)
• Tour at the Frank family's residential neighborhood in Amsterdam