Margot Frank is often remembered only as Anne Frank’s sister. That label hides the full truth. Margot had her own dreams, her own intelligence, and her own future. History stole all of it.
The story begins long before the hiding place. Margot Betty Frank was born on February 16, 1926, in Frankfurt, Germany. Her parents were Otto and Edith Frank. Her younger sister Anne was three years her junior. The sisters grew up happy, playing almost every day in the garden with neighborhood children.
The family’s life changed dramatically on January 30, 1933. Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. The Franks remembered Nazi stormtroopers marching through Frankfurt streets wearing swastika armbands. They shouted antisemitic slogans.
The Nazi regime quickly began restricting Jewish rights. A law against overcrowding in schools limited Jewish students. Public schools became tools for spreading Nazi ideology. Teachers taught students to love Hitler and embrace racism and antisemitism.
Tens of thousands of Jews decided to leave Germany. The Franks were among them. In September 1933, Otto Frank founded a franchise for the Amsterdam branch of the Pecta company. The rest of the family moved to Amsterdam soon after. Margot was seven years old when she arrived in December 1933.
The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939. They felt at home in Amsterdam. Margot learned Dutch quickly and became an excellent student. She attended the Municipal Lyceum for Girls, where she scored nine out of ten in mathematics. A school friend said that even though Margot was the best at everything, she remained modest.
World War II began on September 1, 1939. Margot understood the threat. Two weeks before the German invasion, she wrote to a fellow student in the United States. She said they often listened to the radio during that stressful time and never felt safe.
Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. The Nazi regime the Franks had escaped in 1933 had finally caught them. New antisemitic laws restricted Jewish lives. Jewish civil servants were fired. Jewish businesses had to be registered. Jews could no longer visit parks, cinemas, or non-Jewish shops.
Margot was forced to leave her school and transfer to a Jewish-only school. Jews were banned from sports like tennis and rowing. Otto was forced to give up his companies, but he transferred control to his employees before the Nazis seized them.
The situation worsened in 1941. Jewish men were arrested during raids and deported to Mauthausen concentration camp. Friends and acquaintances disappeared. Reports of their deaths followed. Otto understood the situation was critical. He tried to emigrate to the United States and Cuba but never obtained the necessary documents.
In spring 1942, Otto Frank set up a hiding place in an empty part of his business premises at Prinsengracht 263. On April 29, 1942, regulations forcing Jews to wear a yellow Star of David badge were announced.
June 12, 1942, was probably the last happy moment for the Frank family. It was Anne’s 13th birthday. She received her diary, a diary that would make her famous.
Less than one month later, on July 5, 1942, Margot received a call-up for a so-called labor camp in Nazi Germany. Knowing the fate of friends sent to such camps, the Franks did not hesitate. The next morning, they went into hiding.
In the secret annex, the family spent 761 long days. Seven days later, the Van Pels family joined them. In November, Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist, joined them. The eight people were completely dependent on six helpers who provided food, clothing, and everything necessary.
Silence was essential from 8:30 a.m. when warehouse workers began their day. Any sound could cause suspicion. Mornings were devoted to reading, studying, and preparing for lunch.
Margot, like Anne, wrote her diary or studied. According to Anne’s diary, Margot studied English, French, Latin, biology, and economics. She helped Fritz Pfeffer with his Dutch. Margot took a Latin correspondence course under the name Bep Voskuijl, one of the helpers.
Anne wanted to become a writer and journalist. Margot saw herself as a maternity nurse in Palestine.
The hiding period ended abruptly on August 4, 1944. Dutch police officers, headed by Austrian SS officer Karl Silberbauer, arrested Margot and the others. Two helpers were arrested too. Victor Kugler remembered how Margot wept silently during the arrest.
Silberbauer confiscated valuables and scattered papers and notebooks. Two other helpers saved the documents before the annex was emptied. Anne’s diary survived. Margot’s diary was lost.
From Amsterdam prison, they were sent to Westerbork transit camp. On September 3, 1944, they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Their train was the last to leave Westerbork for this extermination camp.
The journey took three horrible days. Margot and over a thousand others were packed in cattle wagons with little food and almost no water. Upon arrival, Nazi doctors selected who could do heavy forced labor. About 350 people from Margot’s transport were immediately sent to gas chambers and murdered.
Out of 1,019 Jews deported with the Franks, only 45 men and 82 women survived. Otto ended up in a men’s camp. His wife and daughters were sent to the women’s labor camp. Margot was chosen for slave labor, cutting sods and carrying stones. Survivors described Margot, Anne, and Edith as an inseparable trio.
On the night of November 1, 1944, Margot and Anne were deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Their parents stayed at Auschwitz. Edith died of weakness and disease on January 6, 1945, three weeks before the Red Army liberated the camp.
Sanitary conditions at Bergen-Belsen were terrible. There was no water for washing and hardly enough for drinking. The camp was overcrowded. During freezing winters, prisoners slept sitting on the floor. Due to starvation, thirst, and typhus epidemics, the average daily mortality rate was 250 to 300 prisoners.
When Margot and Anne arrived at Bergen-Belsen, they met Dutch friends. In the camp’s terrible conditions, Anne and Margot contracted typhus. They reunited with Nanette Blitz, a Holocaust survivor who described Anne as bald, emaciated, and shivering. Anne did not wish to live. She believed both parents were dead.
Another inmate testified that both sisters had faces like skin over bone. They were terribly cold and placed downstairs next to the door. During the cold winter, they shouted, “Close the door. Close the door.” But that sound became weaker every day.
Survivor Janny Tuson, who worked in the camp hospital, said Anne was delirious and burning up. Janny brought Anne water to wash, but the sisters did not survive. Margot weakened and died when she fell from her bunk onto a cold stone floor. She was killed by the shock. Anne died shortly after Margot.
They were buried in one of the camp’s mass graves by Janny and Lien Brilleslijper, two Dutch Jews the sisters had met and befriended at Westerbork. Margot and Anne both died in February 1945 from typhus. Margot was either 18 or 19 years old. Anne was 15.
One person from the secret annex survived. Otto Frank was liberated on January 27, 1945, when Soviets entered Auschwitz. On his way back to the Netherlands, he learned Edith had died. He hoped Anne and Margot survived. He returned to the liberated Netherlands on June 3, 1945.
All hope was lost one month later when Janny Brilleslijper told him his daughters had died. Miep Gies passed him Anne’s diary. After reading it, Otto was astonished by her writing. He learned Anne’s dreams to become a writer and publish her stories after the war.
At least Anne’s dreams came true. The world learned her story and that of her sister Margot and the others in the secret annex. The first copies of Anne’s book were published in 1947. Since then, the book has been translated into over 70 languages.
In 1960, the hiding place became a museum, the Anne Frank House. Today, you can visit the house where Margot and Anne spent 761 days. You can see Anne’s room with picture postcards and movie stars. You can see her original diary and manuscripts.
Today, Margot Frank is best known as the sister of Anne, forever standing in her shadow. We can only wonder if she would have been as famous if her diary had survived. When Margot perished in the death camp in 1945, she was a young woman. She had to die only because she was Jewish.
We must never forget the Holocaust. We must keep alive the memory of people like Margot and Anne Frank, who became symbols of the Holocaust. We must remember them and make them live forever to remind us of the dangers of discrimination, racism, and hatred.