Otto Heinrich Frank (12 May 1889 – 19 August 1980) was a German businessman, and the father of Anne Frank. He edited and published the first edition of her diary in 1947 (subsequently known in English as The Diary of a Young Girl) and advised on its later theatrical and cinematic adaptations. In the 1950s and the 1960s, he established European charities in his daughter's name and founded the trust which preserved his family's wartime hiding place, the Anne Frank House, in Amsterdam.
Otto Heinrich Frank was born into a German Jewish family. He was the second of four children born to Alice Betty (née Stern, 1865–1953) and Michael Frank (1851–1909). His elder brother was Robert Frank, and younger siblings were Herbert Frank and Helene (Leni) Frank. Otto was a cousin of the furniture designer Jean-Michel Frank and a grandson of Zacharias Frank. His father originally came from Landau, and moved to Frankfurt in 1879, marrying Alice Stern in 1886. Alice and Michael Frank placed value on a middle-class education. Otto had music lessons, learned to ride a horse and visited the theater and opera regularly. The Frank family enjoyed a large circle of friends, and kept a welcoming home. Otto studied economics in Heidelberg from 1908 to 1909 and had a work experience placement at Macy's Department Store in New York City thanks to a college friend his age, Nathan Straus Jr. However, after leaving for New York, he had to return home briefly because of his father's death in September 1909, before once again leaving for the United States. He returned to Germany two years later in 1911.
Frank served in the Imperial German Army during World War I. He and his two brothers were drafted for military service in August 1915 and after training at a depot in Mainz, he served in an artillery unit on the Western Front in which most soldiers were mathematicians and surveyors. In 1916, he was attached to the infantry as a range-finder at the Battle of the Somme. In 1917, he was promoted in the field to lieutenant and served at the Battle of Cambrai, where two of his French cousins, Oscar and Georges, were killed in action. According to other sources, Frank was late returning home because he was ordered to confiscate two horses from a farmer and returned them to the farmer when the war ended in defeat. He was awarded the Iron Cross for his military service.
Frank worked in the bank that his father initially ran, which subsequently he and his brothers inherited until its collapse in the early 1930s. He married 25-year-old Edith Holländer – an heiress to a scrap-metal and industrial-supply business on 12 May 1925, at the synagogue in Aachen, Edith's hometown. Their elder daughter, Margot Frank (Margot Betti), was born 16 February 1926, followed by their younger daughter, Anne (Annelies Marie), on 12 June 1929. Edith died of starvation and disease in Auschwitz on 6 January 1945. In late October 1944, Margot and Anne were transferred from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where they died of typhus.
In 1953, Frank married Elfriede (Fritzi) Markovits, a Holocaust survivor, who assisted him with the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel, which he launched a decade later. Markovits's daughter, Eva Schloss, was a Holocaust survivor, peace activist and international speaker.
As the tide of Nazism rose in Germany and anti-Jewish decrees encouraged attacks on Jewish individuals and families, Frank decided to evacuate his family. In August 1933, they relocated to Aachen, where his mother-in-law, Rosa Holländer resided, in preparation for a subsequent and final move to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. In the same year, Frank's widowed mother, Alice Frank, fled to Switzerland.
Frank's brother-in-law Erich Elias (the husband of his younger sister Leni and father of Buddy Elias) worked in Basel for Opekta, a company that sold spices and pectin for use in the manufacture of jam. The company was looking to expand its operations in Europe, and Elias arranged for Frank to work as Opekta's agent in Amsterdam, allowing Frank to have an income to support his family once they had moved there. Frank and his family lived in Merwedeplein in the modern suburb of Amsterdam-Zuid; they came to know many other German emigrant families. In 1938, Frank started a second company, Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts, and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages. Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. A Jewish butcher, he had fled Osnabrück with his family. In March 1939, Edith Hollander's mother came to live with the Franks and remained with them until her death in January 1942. After Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Frank was forced by the Germans to give up his companies. Frank made his businesses look "Aryan" by transferring control to his employees.
In 1938 and 1941, Frank attempted to obtain visas for his family to emigrate to the United States or Cuba. He was granted a single visa for himself to Cuba on 1 December 1941, but it is not known if it ever reached him. Ten days later, when Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States, the visa was canceled. He also attempted to obtain visas for his family to Britain; however, those were never granted.
At the age of 53, when the systematic deportation of Jews from the Netherlands started in the summer of 1942, Frank took his family into hiding on 6 July 1942 in the upper rear rooms of the Opekta premises on the Prinsengracht, behind a concealing bookcase. The day before, his older daughter, Margot, had received a written summons to report for so-called labour duty in Germany, and Frank immediately decided to move the family to safety. They were joined a week later by Hermann van Pels, who was known as Herman van Daan in Anne's diary, his wife, Auguste van Pels, and their son, Peter van Pels. In November, the group was joined by Fritz Pfeffer, known in Anne's diary as Albert Dussel. Their concealment was aided by Frank's colleagues Johannes Kleiman, whom he had known since 1923, Miep Gies, and her husband Jan Gies; Victor Kugler, and Bep Voskuijl.
The group hid for two years, until their discovery in August 1944. It is not known whether an informant or a chance discovery by authorities ended their period of refuge. The group, along with Kugler and Kleiman, were arrested by SS Officer Karl Silberbauer, whose team was usually tasked with investigating financial crimes and not with searching for hidden Jews. This element, together with the fact that the officers inspected all the crates, bags and jars before they found the revolving bookcase indicates that perhaps they were not aware about the hiders. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were not arrested with the group. Gies managed to excuse herself by saying she knew nothing of those in hiding, and Johannes Kleiman gave Voskuijl his wallet with the request to take it to his friend Derk Kollen who had a pharmacy around the corner on the Leliegracht, a pre-arranged signal to inform Kleiman's family that there was a problem, and she was able to leave the building unhindered because no police officers were guarding the outside at that moment.
After being imprisoned in the Huis van Bewaring (House of Detention) on the Weteringschans in Amsterdam, the Jewish prisoners were sent to the Dutch transit camp of Westerbork and finally, in September, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Frank was separated from his wife and daughters. He was sent to the men's barracks and was residing in the sick barracks when the camp was liberated by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945. After the liberation of Auschwitz, Frank wrote to his mother in Switzerland, where she had fled in 1933 when Hitler came to power. He travelled back to the Netherlands over the next six months and searched diligently for his family and friends. By the end of 1945, he realized he was the sole survivor of those who had hidden in the house on the Prinsengracht.
Letter from the Monowai steamship
The closer we get to home, the greater our impatience to hear from our loved ones. Everything that's happened the past few years! Until our arrest, I don't know exactly what caused it, even now, at least we still had contact with each other. I don't know what's happened since then. Kugler and Kleiman and especially Miep and her husband and Bep Voskuil provided us with everything for two whole years, with incomparable devotion and sacrifice and despite all danger. I can't even begin to describe it. How will I ever begin to repay everything they did. But what has happened since then? To them, to you to Robert [Otto's brother and Edith Frank's brother-in-law]. Are you in touch with Julius and Walter? [Edith Hollander's brothers and Otto's brothers-in-law] All our possessions are gone. There won't be a pin left, the Germans stole everything. Not a photo, letter or document remains. Financially, we were fine in the past few years, I earned good money and saved it. Now it's all gone. But I don't think about any of that. We have lived through too much to worry about that kind of thing. Only the children matter, the children. I hope to get news from you immediately. Maybe you've already heard news about the girls.