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The Frank Sisters Die Before the Liberation of Auschwitz
Most people are familiar with the story of the young Jewish girl Anne Frank. She was forced into hiding with her family in 1942 after her older sister Margo received a call-up notice from the Central Office for Jewish Emigration.
The Frank family was living in the German-occupied Netherlands when Margo was ordered to report to a labor camp. They had fled from their German homeland in 1933 as the Nazi party rose to power.
They remained hidden until August 4, 1944, when their hiding place was ransacked by the Germans. Considered criminals for ignoring Margo’s call-up order and going into hiding, Otto and Edith Frank and their daughters were sentenced to the Punishment Barracks for hard labor. On August 8th they were sent to the Dutch Westerbork transit camp. The Frank family was then transferred to the notorious Auschwitz death camp on September 3, 1944.
Thousands of prisoners were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. Remarkably, the Franks all survived the initial sorting. 549 of the 1,019 people aboard their transport were swiftly sent to their deaths.
The general rubric the Germans used to decide who lived and who died was pretty straightforward. Those who were fit for labor were allowed to live. The young, the old, the ill, and the disabled were killed. Those in their early to mid-teens or younger were typically viewed as unfit for labor and sent straight to the gas chambers. Anne, who was 15 at the time, was one of the youngest on her transport to be spared that fate.
The Frank family had remained in good health while in hiding, which probably helped them survive the initial sorting. Even though they had landed in the Hell-on-Earth of Auschwitz, they hoped their continued usefulness as workers and the imminent arrival of the Allies would ensure their survival.
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…
