Summer - Flipbook - Page 19
Diary of a Dad & Mom: Imagine if Anne
Frank’s Mom & Dad Had Written Their
Own Diaries. What if Otto & Edith Wrote
About their Attempts to Succeed in
America?
Mark Schneider - Past President
Imagine if Anne Frank’s Mom & Dad had kept their
own diaries. What if Otto Frank wrote about his
Macy’s connection and New York experiences years
before he and his wife Edith would present their
daughter Anne with a red-covered diary as a gift for
her 13th birthday?
Years before Otto Frank and Edith Hollander would
marry, they both had America on their minds. In
college, Otto became a close friend of Nathan Straus,
whose family became owners of department stores
Macy’s and Abraham & Straus. In 1908, when Straus
was a student at Heidelberg University, he met an art
history student named Otto Frank. They would
become lifelong friends. In fact, when Otto Frank
visited New York a year later, he began working at
Macy’s. No diary exists about what he did during his
short stint at the 34th Street Macy’s location but
perhaps he worked on their innovative and very
creative product catalogs.
Sadly, Otto Frank’s stay in New York was shortlived as he left and returned to Germany after his
father died. Germany is where Otto met (and would
marry) Edith. She had two brothers Julius and
Walter Hollander, both of whom were arrested
during Kristallnacht, but were still able to emigrate
to the United States before the beginning of World
War II.
Years after they married and a few years after the
birth of Anne and her older sister Margot, the Frank
family left Germany, specifically in 1933. Yes, TBI
history buffs, that’s the same year Temple Beth
Israel was born!!
Otto Frank enjoyed New York City; he wrote to his
sister that he had found a furnished room for fifteen
dollars a month with a German family at 118 West
72nd Street. He words sounded like a true New
Yorker when he wrote the room was
