People Associated With Anne Frank - The Other Occupants of The Achterhuis

The Other Occupants of The Achterhuis

• Otto Frank (Anne and Margot's father, and Edith's husband) was left behind in Auschwitz with the rest of those in the sick barracks when the Nazis evacuated all the other prisoners on a death march. He survived until the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russians shortly afterwards. In 1953, he married Elfride "Fritzi" Markovits-Geiringer, an Auschwitz survivor who lost her first husband and her son when they, too were sent on a death march out of Auschwitz, and whose daughter Eva, also a survivor, was a neighborhood friend of the Frank sisters (below). Otto Frank devoted his life to spreading the message of his daughter and her diary, as well as defending it against Neo-Nazi claims that it was a forgery or fake. He died in Birsfelden, Switzerland from lung cancer on 19 August 1980 at the age of 91. His widow, Fritzi, continued his work until her death in October 1998.

• Edith Frank-Holländer (Anne and Margot's mother, and Otto's wife) was left behind in Auschwitz-Birkenau when her daughters and Auguste van Pels were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, as her health had started to deteriorate. Witnesses reported that her despair at being separated from her family led to an emotional breakdown. They described her searching for her daughters endlessly and said that she seemed to not understand that they had gone, although she had seen them board the train that took them out of the camp. They also said that she began to hoard what little food she could obtain, hiding it under her bunk to give to Anne and Margot when she saw them. They said that Edith Frank told them Anne and Margot needed the food more than she did, and she therefore refused to eat it. She died on 6 January 1945 from starvation and exhaustion, ten days before her 45th birthday and 20 days before the camp was liberated.

• Margot Frank (Anne's older sister) died of typhus in Belsen. According to recollections of several eyewitnesses, this occurred "a few days" before Anne's death in early March 1945, though like Anne's death, the exact date is not known.

• The Van Pels family joined the Franks in their hiding place in concealed rooms at the rear of Otto Frank's office building on 13 July 1942. It should be noted that Anne gave the Van Pels family the pseudonym of the "Van Daan" family in her diary, as she did for most other characters in the diary. The pseudonyms were dropped in later editions, and today, all main characters in published editions of the diary are referred to by their actual names, as they are in this article.

• Hermann van Pels died in Auschwitz. He was the only member of the group to be gassed. However, according to eyewitness testimony, this did not happen on the day of his arrival there. Sal de Liema, an inmate at Auschwitz who knew both Otto Frank and Van Pels, said that after two or three days in the camp, Herman van Pels mentally "gave up", the beginning of the end for any concentration camp inmate. He later injured his thumb on work detail, and requested to be sent to the sick barracks. Soon after that, during a sweep of the sick barracks for selection, he was sent to the gas chambers. This occurred about three weeks after his arrival at Auschwitz, and his selection was witnessed by both his son Peter and Otto Frank.

• Auguste van Pels (Hermann's wife): Her date of death is unknown. Witnesses testified that she was with the Frank sisters during part of their time in Bergen-Belsen, but that she was not present when they died in February/March. According to German records, Mrs. van Pels was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany with a group of eight women on November 26, 1944. Hannah Goslar's testimony was that she spoke to Mrs. van Pels through the barbed wire fence "in late January or early February". Auguste was transferred on February 6, 1945 to Raguhn (Buchenwald in Germany), then to the Czechoslovakia camp Theresienstadt ghetto on April 9, 1945. This same card lists her as being alive on April 11, 1945. As such, she must have died some time after her arrival there, the date of her death occurring sometime between April 11 and early May 1945, when the camp was liberated.

• Peter van Pels (Hermann and Auguste's son) died in Mauthausen after a death march. Otto Frank had protected him during their period of imprisonment together, as the two men had been assigned to the same work group. Frank later stated that he had urged Peter to hide in Auschwitz and remain behind with him, rather than set out on the forced march, but Peter felt that he would have a better chance of survival if he joined the march. Mauthausen Concentration Camp records indicate that Peter van Pels was registered upon his arrival there on 25 January 1945. Four days later, he was placed in an outdoor labor group, Quarz. On 11 April 1945, Peter was sent to the sick barracks. His exact death date is unknown, but the International Red Cross designated it as 2 May 1945. He was 18 years old. Mauthausen was liberated three days later on 5 May 1945 by men from the 11th Armored Division of the U.S. Third Army.

• Fritz Pfeffer (who was the family dentist of Miep Gies and the van Pels) died on 20 December 1944 in Neuengamme concentration camp. His cause of death was listed in the camp records as "enterocolitis", a catch-all term that covered, among other things, dysentery and cholera, both of which were common causes of death in the camps. Of all the stressful relationships precipitated by living in such close proximity with each other for two years, the relationship between Anne and Fritz Pfeffer was one of the most difficult for both, as her diary shows.