Family
Margot Frank

After the German army occupied the Netherlands in May 1940, the situation for Jews in Amsterdam also became increasingly restricted and threatening. Here, too, in autumn 1941 Jewish pupils were segregated and Margot and Anne started attending the Jewish Lyceum.

Early summer 1942 sees the start of the systematic deportation of Jews from the Netherlands. On 5 July 1942, Margot is one of the first to receive a summons for “labour duty in Germany”. The summons is compulsory and means separation from the family and deportation to a concentration camp. Otto and Edith are aware of the summons’ meaning and act immediately: the following day, the Frank family goes into hiding in the secret annex of Otto Frank’s company building.

Margot is sixteen years old when she goes into hiding. Together with Anne, her parents, the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer, she spends more than two years in the secret annex, supported and looked after by former employees of Otto Frank’s. Everyday life is strictly structured around the working day in the spice warehouse below the secret annex: during work hours there must not be any activities that cause noise. Margot and Anne diligently pursue their learning so that they will be able to continue with their education after liberation. In the evenings, the girls also help with office tasks. At first the girls share a bedroom, but once Fritz Pfeffer moves in to the secret annex, Margot sleeps in her parents’ room.

At the beginning of the diary, in particular, Anne describes her sister Margot in a more distanced manner and emphasises the differences between them:

Anne writes that Margot’s character resembles that of her mother Edith, that she rarely loses control, that she is disciplined and clever. Anne, who loves theatre and films and would like to become a writer, finds it hard to understand her sister’s more modest goals. Margot wants to be a maternity nurse in Palestine after the war.

Anne resents when her father appears to favour Margot:

However, time and again, there are episodes in the diary where the closeness of the two sisters becomes apparent, for example when they are lying under a blanket together and reading. The relationship changes in particular during the second year in the secret annex: Anne starts to open up to Margot and finds in her an ally who is pleased about her little sister being close to and in love with Peter van Pels.

Margot also kept a diary during her time in the secret annex, but it has never been found.

On 4 August 1944, SS Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer and Dutch members of the Nazi Security Service burst into the secret annex and arrest the eight people in hiding there. They are taken to the Westerbork transit camp and one month later deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on the last transport out of Westerbork. After a three-day journey in cattle wagons, the women are separated from the men on arrival in Auschwitz. Margot and Anne remain with their mother for the first eight weeks. When Anne is moved to what is known as the scabies block, Margot goes with her sister.

Between late October and early November, the two girls are separated from their mother and transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where there is no space for the many new detainees. Margot and Anne sleep in tents which do not withstand the winter storms, and are given hardly anything to eat. During the day they rip the soles off old shoes. Both are weak and run a high fever; they lie next to each other in the sick barracks. Margot dies first, Anne dies a few days later. It is presumed that they die in late February 1945, ultimately from typhus.