Margot Betti Frank was the elder daughter of Otto and Edith Frank, and
the older sister of Anne Frank, whose deportation order from the Gestapo
hastened the Frank family into hiding, and who subsequently died in
Bergen-Belsen. According to the diary of her younger sister Anne, Margot kept a
diary of her own, but no trace of Margot's diary has ever been found.
Buddy Elias was the first cousin and last surviving close relative to her.
Early life and education Margot Betti Frank, named after maternal
aunt, Bettina Holländer, was born in Frankfurt, Germany to Jewish parents,
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. Margot Frank was sixteen years of age when she and
her family went into hiding. Her family hid in the back upper floor of her
father's office. She 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 the Netherlands. Edith Frank-Holländer and her daughters
moved in with her mother in Aachen in June 1934 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
in Amsterdam South, and 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 deeply
religious. 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 least her mother, and had a much shyer and more tolerant nature as
opposed to Anne, who was determined and often spoke her mind.
While Anne inherited her father's ambivalence towards the Torah, Margot
followed her mother's example and became involved in Amsterdam's Jewish
community. She took Hebrew classes, attended synagogue, and in 1941 joined a
Dutch Zionist club for young people who wanted to immigrate to Israel to found a
Jewish state, where, according to Anne, she wished to become a midwife.
On July 5, 1942, she received a notice to report to a labor camp and the next
day went into hiding with her family at her father's office building. They were
later joined by four other Jewish refugees and remained hidden for two
years until they were betrayed on August 4, 1944 by Tonny Ahler, who was not
identified or apprehended at the time of the incident.
Arrest and death Along with the other occupants of the
hiding place, Margot Frank was arrested by the Gestapo 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 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 sometime in early
March, 1945 at the age of 19. A few days later, Anne died. Janny
Brandes-Brilleslijper and her sister Lin Jaldati buried them together in one of
the camp's mass graves; in August 1945, once she came back to Netherlands and
recovered from typhus, Janny wrote to Otto Frank and informed him that both
his daughters had died. Otto Frank was the only one to survive
out of the eight people that 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. A diary kept by Margot Frank during her time in hiding
is mentioned by Anne in her own diary entry writings but has never been found.
However, letters written by both Frank sisters to American pen pals were
published in 2003. References
Further reading Frank, Anne. 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. Lindwer, Willy. The Last Seven Months of
Anne Frank, Pan Macmillan, 1989. Rubin, Susan Goldman. Searching for Anne
Frank: Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa, Abrams 2003.
Gies, Miep; with Alison Leslie Gold. Anne Frank Remembered, Simon and
Schuster, 1988. Lee, Carol Ann. Roses from the Earth:
the Biography of Anne Frank, Penguin 1999.
Muller, Melissa. Anne Frank: the Biography, foreword by Miep Gies,
Bloomsbury, 1999. Schnabel, Ernst.The Footsteps of Anne
Frank, Pan, 1988. External links
Interview with a schoolfriend of Margot Frank
Rare school photo of Margot Frank taken in 1941, with comments by her friend
Poem written by Otto Frank for Margot's 15th birthday