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Who was Margot Frank?
Margot Betti Frank was born under the zodiac sign of Aquarius on 16 February 1926, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and died in either February or March 1945, aged 18 or 19. She was the elder sister of German-born Jewish girl Annelies Marie ‘Anne’ Frank, who kept a diary while hiding from the Nazis during World War II, and which was published as “The Diary of a Young Girl”, also known as “The Diary of Anne Frank” on 24 June 1947.
It’s known that Margot also kept a diary, but it was never found.
Education and early life
Margot was raised in the outer suburbs of Frankfurt alongside her sister Anne, by their mother Edith Frank who was a housewife and father Otto Heinrich Frank who was a businessman, and the only member of the family to survive the Holocaust.
Otto and Edith urged their daughters to focus on their education and the family had an extensive home library; they lived in a large two-floor house and the girls spent most of their spare time playing in the garden with their neighborhood friends. The children were all of different religions, including Jews, Protestants and Catholics, and they enjoyed learning about one another’s religious holidays.
The family moved to Dichterviertel (Poets’ Quarter) in Dornbusch in 1931, and the house that they lived in still exists (as well as the above mentioned two-floor house). Margot studied at Ludwig-Richter School in Frankfurt, however, after Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, she and numerous other Jewish children were expelled from school.
Leaving Germany
The Frank family followed more than 60,000 other Jews and moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Edith and her daughters first moved to Edith’s mother’ house in Aachen, Germany while Otto was starting a business in Opekta, Amsterdam. Margot moved to Amsterdam in December 1993 and Anne followed in February 1934.
Margot had problems learning the Dutch language, but eventually mastered it and became one of the best students at a local high school. The family’s peace was short-lived as the German forces invaded the country on 10 May 1940; not long after this, Jews were no longer allowed to be members of sports clubs or to go to the cinema, and the following year saw Margot and Anne attend an Jews-onlyschool.
The girls were able to play sports at the new school, with Margot excelling in both tennis and rowing; Anne wrote in her diary about how Edith advised her to follow in her sister’s footsteps.
Margot became more and more interested in the Jewish ways, and began learning Hebrew and going to a synagogue; both Margot and her mother eventually joined the Amsterdam’s Liberal Jewish community. In 1941, Margot joined a club for young Jewish people who wanted to move to Palestine and create a Jewish country – Anne revealed in her diary that Margot wanted to become a midwife.
Going into hiding
The deportation of Jews from the Netherlands began in June 1942, and Margot received her notice to go to a labor camp in Germany on 5 July 1942; the family thus went into hiding at Otto’s company in Amsterdam’s city center, where they remained until they were found by the Nazis on 4 August 1944. The Frank family hid together with four other Jewish refugees: Fritz Pfeffer, Peter Van Pels, Auguste and Hermann.
Margot shared a room with Anne when they began hiding, but soon moved into her parents’ bedroom. The eight people were only able to survive because four of Otto’s employees were willing to risk their own lives by bringing them supplies; these were Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Ben Voskuijl and Miep Gies. During working hours, all eight people in hiding had to remain silent and thus didn’t use water.
Margot spent most of her time reading and studying, the same as her sister, and was mostly into learning Latin.
Discovered by the Nazis
Margot and all seven other inhabitants of the Secret Annex were found and arrested by the Nazi Party’s intelligence agency Sicherheitsdienst on 4 August 1944, and they spent the night at the Reich Security Main Office headquarters prior to being taken to a nearly prison, where they spent three nights.
The family was taken to the Westerbork transit camp by train on 8 August, and because Margot had failed to comply with the notice that she had received and rather went into hiding, the family were declared criminals and ordered to work at a battery dismantling plant. The girls were sent to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen on 30 October, while Edith stayed behind.
Margot contracted typhus in 1944 and died in the following year, while Anne also died from it a couple of days later; Edith also died in captivity.
Otto was the only one amongst the eight people who went into hiding to stay alive, and after he had been given Anne’s diaries by above mentioned Miep Gies, he published them in 1947.
Most popular YouTube videos
There are many videos about the lives and deaths of members of the Frank family uploaded onto YouTube, and these offer an insight into the lives of Jews during World War II. We’re about to cover three of the most viewed amongst these, as they’re also keeping the memory of Margot and Anne alive.
The #1 video “Only Existing Video Of Anne Frank” was uploaded by Video Archive on 2 September 2020, and has since been watched over 6.7 million times; it’s the only time that Anne was captured on film, and she can be seen standing on her balcony.
The second most watched video “Anne Frank The Whole Story Ending” was uploaded by Mr. Raio on 10 March 2017 and has since been viewed over 2.6 million times; it covers the lives of Anne and Margot.
The #3 video “The History of Ana Frank (2001) – Part 2 – Película Completa En Castellano” was posted by David Oc Gi Pelis on 21 March 2013 and has since been viewed close to two million times; it also covers the lives and deaths of Margot and Anne.
