Tag Archives: Margot Frank

Margot Frank—The Forgotten Sister

We all know who Anne Frank is, as her diary is one of the most famous books ever published. But the story of her sister Margot is often overlooked. Margot Betti Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main on 16 February 1926.

Margot also kept a diary but that was never found. But we do know details about her via Anne’s diary and also via letters she sent to pen pals. Margot was 3 years older than Anne so she clearly must have been more aware of what was happening in the world around her.In her second year at secondary school, her English teacher made contact with students in the US. Margot started corresponding with Betty Ann Wagner. Her letter of 27 April 1940 shows that she was aware of the threat of war, “We often listen to the radio, for these are stressful times. We never feel safe because we border directly on Germany and we are only a small country.” Because of the German invasion, two weeks later, this would remain the only letter she sent. Margot’s deportation order from the Gestapo is what hastened the Frank family into hiding, according to Anne’s diary.

Anne wrote of her in her diary on 27 September 1942, “Margot doesn’t need any upbringing, since she’s naturally good, kind and clever, perfection itself.”

Margot was 16 years old when she and her family went into hiding. Just a year younger than my daughter is now, Like my Daughter, Margot, had rowing as a hobby. Margot was a member of the “Society for the Promotion of Water Sports Among Young People,” and her club, near the Berlage Bridge, was a short bicycle ride from the Frank family apartment in the River Quarter. Two photos released by the Anne Frank House two years ago show a side of Margot rarely seen, that of an athlete heartily laughing with her Dutch teammates during practice.

The photos were taken during the summer of 1941 and show Margot with her rowing team on the Amstel River, from which Amsterdam derives its name. In one photo she is featured prominently, while the other is a wide-angle shot of the team in two boats.

Margot Frank (right) with her Amsterdam rowing team in 1941; photo altered to spotlight Margot
Margot Frank—outer boat, in black top behind the rower in white—on the Amstel River in Amsterdam during the summer of 1941

The photos taken by Margot’s gym and rowing coach, Roos van Gelder, showed the team and included Jewish and non-Jewish girls until Jews were banned from water sports in the fall. Because she too was Jewish, van Gelder could no longer coach sports, and the non-Jewish team members showed solidarity by quitting, according to the museum.

On 8 September 1940, Margot and her three teammates won first prize in a rowing match in Zaandam for style rowing.

Margot Frank and the others hiding in the secret annexe were 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. According to Victor Kugler (one of the people who helped the Frank family), while being arrested, Margot was weeping silently. They were transported by train on 8 August to the Dutch Westerbork Transit Camp. They remained at the camp until the selection for Westerbork’s last deportation to Auschwitz on 3 September 1944.

In Auschwitz-Birkenau, Margot and the other prisoners were forced to cut sods or carry stones. The camp Nazi commander regularly organized selections: those who were deemed fit for work by the Nazi doctors were deported to Nazi Germany, while the sick or seriously weakened prisoners were murdered in the gas chambers. Margot and Anne were part of a group that was put on the train to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp on the night of 1 November 1944. After a horrific journey, they arrived in the overcrowded camp. The conditions in Bergen-Belsen were terrible. There was little food and poor personal hygiene. Infectious diseases broke out. Margot and Anne became infected with spotted typhus. Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder, a fellow prisoner, would later recall, “They had those hollowed-out faces, skin and bone…You could see both of them dying, as well as others.” Margot Frank, like her sister Anne, succumbed to spotted typhus in February 1945. Two months after their death, British soldiers liberated the camp.

Today would have been Margot’s 97th birthday

A few years ago, I was asked to speak as a representative of the parents’ council at the graduation night of my oldest son. I ended the speech with a quote from Margot Frank:
“Times change, people change, thoughts about good and evil change, about true and false. But what always remains fast and steady is the affection that your friends feel for you, those who always have your best interest at heart.”

sources

https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/main-characters/margot-frank/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/margot-frank-comes-out-of-her-sisters-shadow-in-new-photos/

https://www.annefrank.org/en/about-us/news-and-press/news/2020/2/13/new-photos-margot-frank-annes-sister/

https://holocaust.georgia.gov/blog-post/2016-02-16/margot-franks-90th-birthday

Margot and Anne Frank

On October 30, 1944, Margot Frank and her younger sister Anne were put on a transport from Auschwitz to Bergen Belsen. By November 1944, Bergen Belsen received approximately 9,000 women and young girls. Margot and Anne were murdered there in February 1945. I deliberately say murdered because they were ill and received no treatment—to me, that is murder.

On October 30, 1944, Margot Frank and her younger sister Anne were put on a transport from Auschwitz to Bergen Belsen. By November 1944, Bergen Belsen received approximately 9,000 women and young girls. Margot and Anne were murdered there in February 1945. I deliberately say murdered because they were ill and received no treatment—to me, that is murder.
The story of Anne is well-known through her diary. It is believed that Margot kept a diary, but it was never found. I think her diary would probably tell an even more compelling story, she was three years older than Anne, and she would therefore had a better comprehension of what was going on in the world around them.

About Margo, Miep Gies said, “I didn’t have any relationship with Margot. She was there, and that was all.” Anne says more or less the same about her sister in her diary. Describing Margot at the table, she wrote “Eats like a little mouse, doesn’t say a word.”

I often wondered if they had remained in Auschwitz instead of being moved to Belsen-Bergen, would they have survived? I realize the irony of that statement, but it could have been a possibility.

“I have often been downcast but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary, I treat all the privations as amusing.” —Anne Frank

“Times change, people change, thoughts about good and evil change, about true and false. But what always remains fast and steady is the affection that your friends feel for you, those who always have your best interest at heart.” —Margot Frank

SOURCES

https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/anne-frank

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/?q=anne%20frank&mode=gallery&view=horizontal

The Forgotten Tragedy of Anne and Margot Frank

I am a member of several history websites receiving daily notifications about events that happened in history this day. Today, I received a notification of the anniversary of the 1945 death of Anne Frank at Bergen Belsen.

I don’t know how they came to that conclusion, because the exact date of Anne and Margot Frank’s deaths is not known. But this is that forgotten tragedy of their deaths their families like Otto Frank and the girls’ Aunt Leni Frank Elias did not have a date where they could remember the death of the two girls, and maybe light a candle for them. Nor would they have had a date where they could say a specific prayer.

Luckily, Leni Frank-Elias moved to Basel in Switzerland in the 1930s together with her husband and sons Stephan and Bernhard (Bernd) aka Buddy.

Anne Frank, clearly, was very fond of her cousin Bernhard.

Buddy (Bernd), was born in Frankfurt in 1925 and grew up in Basel. After his international career as an ice clown and actor, he became the President of the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel.

In a letter to Alice Fran dated 13 January 1941, Anne Frank wrote:

«I’m at the rink every spare minute. (…) I’m taking skating classes regularly now, where we’re learning how to dance and jump and everything else. (…) I hope that I’ll learn to skate as well as Bernd someday. (…) Bernd, maybe we can skate as a pair together someday, but I know I’d have to train very hard to get to be as good as you are.»

On 3 June 1942, Anne writes a birthday letter to her cousin Buddy. This is the last direct contact between the two cousins. One month later, on 6 July, the Franks leave their apartment in Merwedeplein in Amsterdam and go into hiding in the secret annexe, which had been prepared for them months before.

It is a tragedy that Anne and Margot Frank’s family and friends were even denied the date of their death.

Source

https://www.thepeoplehistory.com/march12th.html

https://www.annefrank.ch/en

Happy Birthday Anne Frank

Dear Anne, today you would have turned 93, but we all know the history why that didn’t happen.

Some of that history is written in the diary you received on your 13th birthday, June 12 1942.So many people have read that diary, your private thoughts laid bare for the world to see. But I am sure you would not have minded that because aside it being a diary, it is also a historical record. You made sure of that because you could see and hear what was happening around you. You also heeded the call of the exiled Dutch government for people to record as much as they could.

What some people don’t realize if the Nazis would not have got to power, your diary would have looked so much different, it wouldn’t even have been written in Dutch but German, Because if the Nazis had not got to power your parents would not have had to move. Your German diary would have told a different story. The story about a different kind of anxiety. The anxiety of a regular teenage girl. Her first dance, her first kiss and perhaps even of the first time having sex with a boyfriend. The anxiety of seeing each other naked for the first time, and maybe how you blushed the first time he touched your breasts and you touched his penis. Who knows, what would be in that diary? I am not saying this to be disrespectful, far from it, like any other girl you deserved that level of intimacy but you were denied it. But your German diary would have been just that, a diary, only for you to read.

People call you an author. But you weren’t you were just a girl who had the endure something no girl should have to endure.

And like any other girl you had friends.

Lucia “Lucie” van Dijk , a Christian friend from the Montessori school. Lucie’s mother was an adamant member of the NSB,the Dutch Nazi party, until the end of the war, but Lucie’s disillusioned father left the party in 1942. You were shocked when the van Dijks became party members, but your dad ,Otto, patiently explained to her that they could still be good people even if they had distasteful politics.

Rie “Ietje” Swillens was another good friend of yours all the way through Montessori school.

Nanette Blitz Konig who was born on April 6, 1929 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. just a few months older then you. A friend and a class mate . You were in the same class at the Jewish Lyceum.

Like your family ,the Blitz family was arrested and taken to the Westerbork transit camp and from there were deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was Nannette that reunited you with your sister Margot, in Bergen Belsen. However Nanette survived the war and the Holocaust. She now lives in Brazil.

Then there was another Nanette ; Nanette van Praag Sigaar.

You were also in the same class at the Jewish Lyceum, in Amsterdam. You even wrote about her in your diary. You said “Nannie is a funny, tiny, clever girl. I like her. She is smart.” What you didn’t know is that Nannie was murdered in Auschwitz on November 5,1942, just a few months after you received your diary as a birthday gift.

Your 13th birthday gift is now a gift to us all. Not just a gift but also a stark reminder of what humans are capable of doing to other humans.

You would have been 92 today. Nowadays you may have been famous as one of the first people being vaccinated against the Covid 19 virus. But you were killed by a much worse virus, hate.

Happy Birthday Anne, or rather Van Harte Gefeliciteerd.

sources

https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/569313/uit-het-dagboek-van-anne-frank

https://www.geni.com/people/Nanette-van-Praag-Sigaar/6000000047467779849

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5235152/bio

Self Isolation

anne

In many countries around the globe people are being advised to self isolate when they have or think they may have symptoms of the Covid 19 infection. The recommended period vary between 7 and 14 days.

Many people say this has never happened before.However for many this was a reality due to the virus  created by Adolf Hitler and his like minded friends in Germany and other European countries, a virus fueled by hate and indifference. The difference though the Covid 19 virus has a high survival rate whereas the Nazi virus meant a certain death for many, especially when you were Jewish,Gypsy,Disabled or or other groups deemed sub human by the Nazis.

To survive many went into hiding, which was basically an extreme  form of self isolation. There are many examples but I am sticking to the most famous account of ‘ Self Isolation’ that of the Frank family.

annex

Of the Frank family only Otto, the Father, survived. He lost hos 2 daughters and his wife to this ‘virus of hate and indifference’

Below are some diary entries of Anne and also some words of Margot.

Margot

Margot Frank

“Times change, people change, thoughts about good and evil change, about true and false. But what always remains fast and steady is the affection that your friends feel for you, those who always have your best interest at heart.”

anne frank

Anne Frank

“Last night Margot and I were lying side by side in my bed. It was incredibly cramped, but that’s what made it fun. She asked if she could read my diary once in a while. ‘Parts of it,’ I said, and asked about hers. She gave me permission to read her diary as well.”

“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”

margot and anne

A vaccine against the Covid 19/Corona virus is currently in development, especially scientists in Israel are making a good progress on a vaccine and a treatment. Just imagine what could have been if the Nazis hadn’t been able to carry out their final solution.

Unfortunately there is no vaccine as of yet against hate and indifference.

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What could have been.

Margot

Just a young girl standing outside of her school  in Amsterdam,with a sign saying ‘memory of my school time 1936’ . The whole future was still ahead of her. The possibilities were endless.Her dream was to become a midwife, a noble profession to help deliver new life, witness the joy of the young mothers, but sometimes also the anxiety and grief when things did not go to plan.

There is no doubt in my mind that she would have become a fabulous midwife. Unfortunately it was not to be. On July 5, 1942, she received a message to report to a labor camp. She didn’t she went into hiding instead the following day, together with the rest of her family, including her younger sister, who would sell millions of books.

On 4 August 1944 the Gestapo came and arrested her and her family. She and her sister ended up in Bergen Belsen after having been in Westerbork and Auschwitz prior to that. Her sister and her were put on the last deportation from Auschwitz.

In Bergen Belsen she died of typhus either in February or March 1945, the exact date is not known. It could have been even before her 19th birthday on February 16th, but the date is not known. Her sister dies a few days later, the girls are buried in the same grave.

All the babies she could have helped deliver as a midwife. All the artiste,scientists or trades people. But she never got the chance.

The girl in the picture is Margot Frank, Anne Frank’s older sister.

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Source

Rare Historical Pictures

 

The last train journey of 2 sisters.

Bergen BelsnTwo sisters, the younger one lively,outgoing and bubbly, the older one a bit more reserved and shy.

Two sisters who were very different and yet in many ways the same,

On October 30, 1944, they both boarded a train. Not to go a big city to go for a shopping spree or to the cinema, like so many teenage girls would have done because it is one of the most normal things for young girls to do.

Nor did they go on a school trip or a holiday.

You see it was not that kind of train where you could sit down relax and enjoy the scenery,slowly passing by your window.

The train these girls were pushed in to was not fit for human beings, but they were not seen as human beings. They were seen as a disease, a plague of some sorts. Vermin and subhumans they were called.

The train left Auschwitz and headed for Bergen Belsen, a journey from one hell to another.

The two girls were Anne and Margot Frank.The dates of their deaths is not even exactly known, either February or March 1945. All that is certain they died in Bergen Belsen just a few weeks before it was liberated.

anne and margot

 

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The last single Journey: Westerbork-Auschwitz

Sign

One of the cruel jokes the Nazis played on their victims was giving them hope. Like a railway sign indicating a return journey that was never to be. Only empty trains returned ready to pick up more victims like lambs led to the slaughter.

Trein

On September 3,1944 the last transport by train from Westerbork Transit Camp to Auschwitz took place.

Westerbork

Between July 15 ,1942 and September 13,1944 a total of 99 trains had left Westerbork for either Auschwitz,Sobibor,Theresienstadt and Bergen Belsen.

On the September 3rd transport 1019 victims were transported to Auschwitz. A journey which would take 3 days. Even before they reached Auschwitz they endured hell, because they were cramped in cattle cars, quite literally like cattle. There were no toilets, barely any food or water, nowhere to sleep. Some would die even before they reached their final destination.

What makes this transport special is because of one family, A Father,mother and 2 daugthers, only the father would eventually survive. This family was the Frank Family.

scheule

Anne and Margot Frank had one more journey to make on 28 October they were selected to be transported to Bergen-Belsen, where both girls died. Otto and Edith Frank remained in Auschwitz but Edith eventually died of starvation in January 1945.

Frank Family

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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Anne and Margot Frank

anne-and-margot-frank

I often add words in the titles of my blog to describe parts of the contents of the blog. In this case I don’t have to do that because everyone knows the story of Anne Frank and to a lesser extend that of her older sister Margot.

On the 3rd of September 1944 they were deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz.

But on October 30, 1944, as the Russians advanced into Poland, many of the female prisoners of Auschwitz were deported to Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany. Margo and Anne Frank were among those forced to make the trip, but their mother, Edith, was left behind.Both girls died in Bergen-Belsen.

One of the saddest aspects is that the date of their death isn’t really known, it is assumed it was in February 1945 but the exact date is not known. This may sound like it is not important and maybe it isn’t but especially when it comes to Margot it isn’t know if she was 18 or 19 when she died, or did she die on her birthday 16 February. To us this means nothing but as a Father myself I could understand these are things Otto Frank would have like to known, because it would be important to a parent.

It really is unfathomable that these 2 young women died not because they were hardened criminals, or had a rare disease, or  were planning a military coup. No the only reason they died was because they were Jewish.

Below are some pictures of the two Frank sisters.

61759

At school

Anne_en_Margot_Joods_lyceum_tintjeblauw

145636911356ce6dd918fd0_0

Anne,Margot and a proud dad, Otto.

spruiten-a-foto

The Frank family, Margot, Otto, Anne, and Edith, shortly before going into hiding

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3eac7910ea5af6d66d74a4fac1d00755--margot-frank-anne-frank

anne_frank_grave

I so hope that no teenage diary like Anne Frank’s diary has to be published again.I also hope that those who use Anne Frank’s memory and pictures as sick jokes will read this and look into the eyes of both girls and then look in the eyes of their own wives,daughters,nieces, or grand children and realize it could have been them.

Donation

I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you. To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.

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Sources

USHMM

Yad Vashem

NIOD