Margot Frank
Margot is Anne Frank's sister. Her full name is Margot Betti Frank. She was born on the 16th of February, 1926. She went to Ludwig-Richter School in Frankfurt, until Adolf Hitler started killing jews in Germany. In response, the Frank family moved to the Netherlands. In her new school, Margot achieved high academic results until the German invasion of the Netherlands. The Germans created anti-jewish laws, forcing Margot out of her school and into an all jew school. Here she displayed intelligence and studiousness that made her noteworthy at her previous schools. She attended Hebrew Classes and went to the synagogue on a normal basis. However, on July 5th, 1942, Margot received a notice that she was to go to a labor camp. Her and her family went into hiding the very next day. The family was betrayed about two years later, and she went to a concentration camp in the Netherlands. Later she went Auschwitz. She and Anne survived the terror of Auschwitz and were sent to Bergen Belsen where she, and her sister, died of Typhus.
Edith Frank
Edith was the youngest of four children, having been born into a German- Jewish family in Aachen, Germany. Her father, Abraham Holländer (1860–1928) was a successful businessman. He worked in industrial equipment and was prominent in the Aachen Jewish community. Her mother, Rosa Stern (1866–1942), was also prominent in the Jewish community. Edith met Otto Frank in 1924 and got married on his birthday in 1945. Their first daughter Margot was born in 1926. Anne followed her in June, 1929. As Germans began killing Jews, the family moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Otto has a business selling pectin, which is used in making jam. But her Walter, (1897–1968) and Julius (1894–1967), escaped to the United States. Her mother came to Amsterdam to be close to the Franks. Edith's sister, Bettina Hollander had died earlier at the age of sixteen due to appendicitis when Edith was just 14. In 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. The family went into hiding in 1942. They stay at a secret annex with the Van Pels family and a dentist, Fritz Pfeffer. Two years later, they are found. The family is sent o Westerbork camp in the Netherlands. The family is then sent to Auschwitz, where she is separated from Otto. She never sees him again. Later, Edith looses Anne and Margot. Edith is soon picked for the gas chambers, but she escapes to another area of the camp. Here she barely eats, saving food for her family when she gets free, but dies of starvation from not eating the food. She died in January, 1945, only twenty days before the camp was liberated. She never saw her husband.
Peter Van Pels
Peter was born on November 8, 1926, Germany. His family moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, when his father's (Hermann Van Pels) business had to be sold because of anti-Jewish laws in Germany. His father begins working for a man named Otto Frank. Soon, the families begin socializing. But soon, German Nazis invade the Netherlands. They go into hiding with the Franks, and a dentist named Fritz Pfeffer. At first, Peter and Anne don't get along in the annex. but as a few months pass, they begin to enjoy each other's company. After two years in the annex, they are discovered. They were sent to Auschwitz, a concentration camp. Here, Peter van Pels, Otto Frank, and Hermann van Pels were assigned to a forced labor group. In October 1944, Peter witnessed his father, Hermann, being selected for the gas chambers. After this date, details surrounding Peter van Pels are sketchy because of the liberations going on in Germany. Camp evacuations started between October 1944 and January 27, 1945. During this period, Peter van Pels was evacuated on a forced march when the Germans abandoned Auschwitz to the advancing Russian Army. Otto Frank recalled how he urged Peter to hide in the Hospital Sick Ward with him, but Peter felt he had a better chance of survival by going on the forced march (there was much fear that the Germans would kill all remaining Jews too sick to go on the forced march, rather than let them fall into the hands of the advancing Russian Army; fortunately for Otto Frank, the Germans ran away as the Russians approached, leaving them to survive when the Russians liberated the camp). Mauthausen Concentration Camp records indicate that Peter van Pels was registered upon his arrival there on January 25, 1945. Four days later, he was placed in an outdoor labor group. On April 11, 1945, Peter was sent to the sick barracks. His exact death date is currently unknown, and the International Red Cross designated it as May 5, 1945.
The Diary's VersionIn Anne's Diary, not everyone was called by their actual names. Here is the names she gave to her diary:
Fritz Pfeffer- Mr. Dussel Peter Van Pels- Peter Van Daan Auguste Van Pels- Auguste Van Daan Hermann Van Pels- Hermann Van Daan |
Otto Frank
Otto Heinrich Frank was born on the 12th of May, 1889. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany. His parents were Michael Frank and Alice Stern Frank. He Served as an officer for the German army during the first world war. He married his wife Edith on the same day as his birthday in 1925. His First daughter Margot who was born the next year, and his second daughter Anne was born in 1929. As Nazism rose in Germany and Anti-Jewish laws were put into action, he decided to take his family to safer west Europe. In August, 1933, the family moved to Aachen, where they prepared for the final move to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Here he started a business called Opekta, which sold pectin, an ingredient for making jam. life was good here. But the Germans invade Holland in May, 1940. Mr. Frank must make his business non-Jewish. In 1938 and 1941 to get visas to the United States or Cuba. A single Visa was offered to him, but no one knows if he got it or not. Otto Frank took his family into hiding on July 6th, 1942. A week later Hermann Van Pels and his family joined the franks in the secret annex behind his warehouse. In November Fritz Pfeffer joined the "family". Their concealment was aided by Miep Gies and Victor Kugler. Two years later, an anonymous informant told the German Green Police that their were Jews in hiding. Kugler was arrested. After being in prison in Amsterdam, they were sent to the concentration camp of Westerbork, then finally at Auschwitz In that September, he was separated from the rest of his family and was sent to the men's barracks at Auschwitz. The camp was liberated on January 27th, 1945. He traveled back to Amsterdam and tried trace his family. But by the end of 1945, Otto was the only survivor of all the people who went into hiding in the Annex. Later, Miep Gies retrieved some documents and other things, including Anne's diary. Otto read it and wanted to publish it, and later Amsterdam's Contact Publishing published the diary. Otto later married a former neighbor, Elfriede Geiringer. Otto Frank later died of lung cancer on August 19th, 1980.
Hermann Van Pels
Hermann Van Pels was born on March 31st, 1898. He married. On December 5, 1925, Hermann van Pels married Auguste Röttgen. Their only son, Peter van Pels, was born on November 8, 1926. When laws in Germany prevented Jews from owning businesses, Hermann must sell his business. He takes his family to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. There he meets Otto Frank, and begins to work for his business Opekta, which sold spices for making jam. And when Germany invades the Netherlands, the van Pels go with the Franks into hiding in a secret annex. two years later, however, they are discovered. In September 1944, Hermann van Pels, his son Peter, and Otto Frank were taken to the Auschwitz men's concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. He was assigned hard labor until an injury to his hand forced him to stop working. Unable to work, he was selected for disposal in the gas chambers. In mid-October 1944, Hermann van Pels was gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.is remains were cremated.
Auguste Van Pels
Auguste Van Pels is born on September 29th, 1900 in Buer Germany. She marries Hermann Van Pels in December, 1925. She becomes a dutch ciitizen, because she must take the nationality of her husband. On November 8th, 1926, their only child, Peter, is born. On June 6th, 1942, the family moves to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In July, they go with the Franks into hiding. But they are all arrested on August 4th, 1944. Auguste is sent to Auschwitz, and survives a selection for the gas chambers. On November 26th, however, she goes with Anne and Margot to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She is then deported to Raguhn, a sub camp of buchenwald, and is then transported to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. She dies there sometime in April, 1945.
Fritz Pfeffer
Fritz Pfeffer was born in Gießen, Germany, one of the five children of Ignatz Pfeffer and Jeannette Hirsch-Pfeffer. He was born on April 30th, 1889. After completing his education, Fritz trained as a dentist and jaw surgeon, obtained a license to practice in 1911 and opened a surgery the following year in Berlin. He served in the German Army during the First World War and afterwards, in 1921 married Vera Bythiner. They had a son, Werner Peter Pfeffer, but the couple divorced in 1932. The tide of antisemitism in Germany, which increased from the election of Adolf Hitler in 1933, forced most of Fritz's relatives to flee the country. His mother had died in 1925; his father remarried and remained in Germany, only to be arrested; he died in Theresienstadt in October 1942. In 1936 he met a young woman Charlotta Kaletta (1910 – 1985), born in Ilmenau, Thuringia in Central Germany, who shared his history of a broken marriage. She was estranged from her first husband, Ludwig Lowenstein, and their son Gustaf.
The couple moved in together but were prohibited from marrying under the 1935 Nazi Nuremberg Laws which forbade marriages between Jews and non-Jews. Kristallnacht cemented their decision to leave Berlin and they fled to Amsterdam in December 1938. They were there for two years before the German invasion. After establishing a dental practice in Amsterdam's Rivierenbuurt he became acquainted with the Van Pels and Frank families. Miep Gies met Pfeffer at one of the Franks' house parties and became a patient in his dental practice.n the autumn of 1942, he decided to go into hiding and asked Miep Gies about suitable addresses. She consulted Otto Frank, who, with his and the van Pels family, was being hidden by her in secret rooms in the Franks' office building. Frank agreed to accommodate Pfeffer, and he was taken into their hiding place on 16 November, where his medical degree came in handy as they could not contact a doctor while in hiding. Margot Frank moved into a room with her parents, to allow Pfeffer to share a small room with Anne, beginning what would become a torturous relationship for both. Pfeffer was taken to the Nazi headquarters in Amsterdam-South, then to a prison for three days before being transported to Westerbork on 8 August. Pfeffer was taken to the Punishment Barracks with the others, where he undertook hard labor, until he was selected for deportation to Auschwitz on 3 September. He was separated from the others on arrival on 6 September and sent to the men's barracks, where he was reunited with Otto Frank. On 29 October he was transferred with 59 other medics to Sachsenhausen and from there to Neuengamme on an unknown date. There, he died at age 55 in the sick barracks, of enterocolitis on 20 December 1944, according to the camp's records. |
