Anne Frank's Family Read online

  Not much more remains for me now to tell you & report about my youth.

  You have grown up into thinking people, you had a sunny & happy childhood. We did everything in our power to make your lives & your childhood beautiful & happy. These memories have stayed with you and remain today, & may they stay faithfully in your minds, more than ever, since the serious times have separated us & each of you has had to travel your own path.—I hope I can still accompany you for a little while longer, but I cannot give you any more help or support. But knowing that my deepest, most heartfelt thoughts are always with you will give you, I hope, something stable to rely on, something you can always feel surrounding you even though you are all mature, grown people yourselves.—Even when countries and oceans separate you, never forget the beautiful childhood you had together, which was meant to give you & did give you a guiding thread for your whole lives. Always keep as a valuable treasure the memory of the family home, filled with love, & do not let the image of it fade in your minds.

  Your Mother

  Basel, December 1935

  Two days later they arrive, Otto and Margot. Franzi has prepared a light supper, and Margot, worn out from the long train ride, has gone to bed early. Franzi has tidied up the kitchen before withdrawing to her attic room, and Alice and Otto sit together for a while longer. Alice examines the new photographs her son has brought with him from Amsterdam, especially the pictures of Anne.

  Otto also tells her that his business is slowly but surely getting off the ground; the sales reps have sold significantly more pectin in the past six months than in the whole previous year, he says, and they have had a very good autumn. The business outlook is getting better and better, and the children are a great joy to them. It is harder for Edith to get used to living in the Netherlands than it is for him, though. She is having greater difficulties with the foreign language and is not making new friends. Even now, after two years, she still feels homesick. But it’s going very well for the children; it is truly a joy to watch them grow up. They speak Dutch like natives, he says, and Anne is happy in school.

  Alice could listen to him talk for hours, but Otto looks exhausted, the long journey was hard for him too. So she does not protest when he withdraws. Before she goes to sleep, she stays standing at the door to the guest room for a little while, listening. She can’t hear anything—father and daughter are both asleep. Alice smiles. What a beautiful, clever girl the nine-year-old Margot is. And so tomorrow is the great birthday celebration. Alice goes to her bedroom, takes the letter she had finished out of the desk drawer, and adds something more at the end, a P.S. for her grandchildren Stephan, Buddy, and Margot:

  And now to my little ones, with our little Annelein missing, unfortunately. I would like to imprint this day especially into the memory of the three of you. Not because of outward presents but because of all the love & devotion that you have experienced today with us grown-ups, December 20th should be & remain a day for you to remember. You must all know that no one except your parents loves you as much as

  Your

  Grandma

  * * *

  1 Jordanstrasse was later renamed Mertonstrasse; today it is called Dantestrasse.

  2 Alice to her children. Frank-Elias Archive. All of the italic passages in this chapter are taken from this document.

  3 Helene Stern was the second wife of Emanuel Stern, Anne Frank’s great-great-grandfather, who died in 1841.

  4 Julius Cahn, one of Cornelia’s brothers, later lived at Villa Hattstein in Falkenstein, in the Taunus mountains near the Rhine. The Frank family often visited him there.

  5 A street near the Eschenheimer Tower.

  2.

  Where We Come From

  Alice had the good fortune to be born into a family where many stories were told and much was handed down from one generation to the next. In her letter to her sons, Robert, Otto, and Herbert, and her daughter, Leni, she wrote that her grandfather Elkan Juda Cahn had still lived in the ghetto as a young man. It was he who had passed the memories of Judengasse, or “Jews’ Alley,” the Jewish street in Frankfurt, down to the family.

  These images of the past must have lived on in his daughter Cornelia and his granddaughter Alice, because what grandfather does not tell his children and grandchildren how different life used to be back then, back in his day, especially when the economic and social relations were so drastically different, as was the case between Elkan Juda Cahn and his descendants? Only in later generations do the images start to fade, the stories lose their vitality, until finally only a couple of memorial objects remain. For example, Buddy Elias, Anne Frank’s last living cousin, has hanging in his house a hand-tinted photograph of Elkan Juda Cahn and his wife, Betty, and the family possessions include a twenty-four-place set of silverware, hand forged from real silver, bearing the initials EJC. That is what remains of him. How he lived, what he dreamed, and which dreams he was able to make come true—no stories are told about any of that anymore.

  But Alice doubtless grew up with stories of Judengasse. Her grandfather would have told her about the old days sometimes; he would have said: “I didn’t have it as good as you do.” And then he would have described the little alley, only four or five blocks long, surrounded by walls and so narrow that no cart could turn around in it. Only north of the synagogue that stood at the middle of the Judengasse was it a little wider, but even there not wide enough for any light, air, or sunshine to make its way in.

  Starting in 1462, all the Frankfurt Jews, who had previously lived in the middle of the city, most of them near the cathedral, had had to move into the newly built houses along the medieval city wall. There were gates at both ends of the alley, which were locked in the evenings and on Christian holidays, and there was also the Judenbrückelchen Bridge near the middle of the street. Every time Elkan Juda Cahn spoke of the gates, he emphasized that the gates and walls not only locked the Jews in but also protected them against enemy incursions and raids. In fact, in some cities, such as Speyer, the Jews had been petitioning for centuries to be allowed to enclose their quarter in walls.

  In Frankfurt, on the other hand, the city council had forced the Jews to move to the Judengasse. The houses were spacious enough for all 110 people to live comfortably at first, but in the sixteenth century the number of inhabitants multiplied many times over, and it grew more and more crowded. The city council nevertheless refused to grant permission for any expansion.

  “When I was a boy,” Elkan Juda Cahn said, “the northern part of the Judengasse had already burned down, but my father, Nathan David, always told me how it was when he was young. Back then, unbearably cramped conditions were prevalent. Back then, more than three thousand people lived in the Judengasse, and they built on every inch—every courtyard, every little garden, the cemetery, everything, everything was built on, and whatever could be added to and built up higher, was. Every Sukkot arbor had been turned into a house, and they even built more houses on the roofs of the other houses. The rooms had gotten so small and narrow that you could put a bed only on the long side. You can’t imagine how cramped and crowded everything was.”

  Alice couldn’t really imagine it, of course, even though in her own childhood in the eighth decade of the nineteenth century the remains of the Judengasse were still standing: pitiful, narrow houses, where she never would have wanted to live. When her grandfather talked about how his father, Nathan David, and the other Jews had lived, she always pictured in her mind the anthills in the Palmengarten, which Richard, Klärchen’s brother, used to poke around in with a branch he had broken off. Even less could she imagine her own grandfather, this respectable and prosperous businessman, and his father, Nathan David, whom she knew only from stories, as dirty little boys in the Judengasse, when he described the filth and the stink that you could never overcome. “The open sewers that the inhabitants had for their needs were always clogged, and the street was so narrow that you could barely get enough air to breathe. The stink was horrible. No wonder the child
ren were pale and thin and suffered from scabies, cradle cap, impetigo, and the like. Even though they played and ran around in the street the way all children do, until they were old enough to take on their share of obligations.”

  Elkan Juda Cahn and his wife, Betty (Anne Frank’s great-great-grandparents) (photo credit 2.1)

  But Nathan David, his father, had had it better than the other children, Alice’s grandfather went on. Already as a young man he often went with his father as a peddler to the surrounding villages: to nearby Taunus, to Wetterau, and as far away as the Odenwald. They had dealt in old things—junk, used clothing. The Jews were not allowed to practice any handicrafts, because that might have cut into the guilds’ business and they blocked all possible competition. Aside from butchering and baking for their own needs, the only trade left to the Jews was in old, used things—officially, anyway. Even back then, the residents of the Judengasse had begun to make new clothes and sell them; there were more than enough people there who could sew.

  “My father loved to go wandering as a peddler,” Alice’s grandfather said. “It was the only way to get out of the stink and the cramped conditions, and see other things. Other faces, red from the sun, animals, birds, trees, fields, meadows. And the sky. In the Judengasse you could never really see the sky, he said. Peddling was a joy for him, he could move around and finally breathe some fresh air for once. He was healthier than most of the others. And then he always told us what a splendid experience it was for him to pick an apple from a tree. Or go looking for wild strawberries, which they never, ever had at the Jewish market.”

  Sometimes he was gone for days and came home only just before the Sabbath. Then his father would put the little money that he had earned on the table and head off to the ritual bath in the cellar of one of the houses, to purify himself before the Sabbath started. Nathan David would stretch out on his bed, and his mother would rub his swollen feet with oil. “The rich Jews who traveled to other countries to sell their wares had horses and carriages, of course, which they kept outside of the Judengasse, or they rented them for the journey. But everyone else had to go on foot. Sometimes someone would take pity on them and bring them part of the way in his wagon or oxcart, but most of the time that didn’t happen, they were more often spat on. It was hard work to go from village to village, from house to house, to knock on strangers’ doors and offer their wares.”

  “Why didn’t they have a store?” Alice asked once. “It’s a lot easier to sell things in a store.”

  “Jews were not allowed to have stores,” her grandfather answered.

  Until the ghetto was dissolved, it was prohibited for Jews to own stores outside Judengasse. It was forbidden for the rich Jews too, the pawnbrokers and money changers, although of course they found ways to get their wares from the Judengasse to the Christian part of the city, through middlemen. Especially in spring and fall, when there were the great fairs in Frankfurt and things were being bought and sold throughout the city, when merchants and sellers poured into the city from the surrounding areas, near and far. Many Jews dealt in “foreign trade”; in other words, they took long trips, as far as England, and sold fabrics, silks, brightly patterned brocades, lace, jewelry and other decorations of embossed silver, and whatever else the rich aristocrats and patricians needed for their lavish lifestyles. And since a ban on usury was imposed upon the churches and cloisters in the Middle Ages, the Jews had, from early on, resorted to money lending and collecting interest. The large number of small states and principalities, and the desire of the princes and noblemen to keep a lavish court, made money lending necessary even aside from all the wars that needed to be waged. The Jews were traders, merchants, and bankers, they specialized in high-risk credit and short-term loans, and the noblemen not only tolerated high interest rates but demanded them, because then their profit was higher too, from taxes. The “Jew profiteer” typically made his money from the poorer city residents and farmers, of course, which stirred up hatred against the Jews. But from changing money, and loaning money against collateral—money that often could not be repaid, so the collateral was forfeited—arose great warehouses, stockpiles, and finally businesses. And from the earlier money-lending businesses grew the banks, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were founded, went bankrupt, and made way for new establishments. The chain of Jewish money changers in Frankfurt remained unbroken down to the Rothschilds. And the military supply business gave rise to a brisk trade in horses.

  “The life the Jews led was really hard. There were plenty of times that they didn’t have enough to eat,” Elkan Juda Cahn said. “If my father’s name had been Rothschild, or Speyer, it would have been a different story, but his name was just Cahn.”

  “Why are you saying that?” Alice protested. “You usually always say that we should be proud to be descendants of the Cahns.”

  “Yes, all Jews named Cahn or Cohn or anything like that are cohanim. They belong to the priestly caste and descend from Aaron, Moshe Rabbeinu’s brother. Aaron was the first high priest of our people, chosen by God, a peaceful man whose rod made flowers bloom.”

  Alice had heard this many times before; it didn’t interest her, at least not at the time. “Tell me about the rich Jews,” she pleaded. “Tell me about the Rothschilds.”

  “I knew one myself, old Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who founded the great banking house M. A. Rothschild & Sons and later managed the finances at the court of the Hessian landgrave. The Rothschilds lived in the Haus zum Grünen Schild, the House of the Green Shield, across from the Judenbrückelchen. Mayer Amschel started making coins and medallions, and later became the main military contractor. He dealt in textiles with England, changed money, and finally moved into the banking business with loans to the state. Aside from all that, he married well. Meyer Amschel’s wife, Gutle, was the daughter of Wolf Salomon Schnapper, the court chamberlain, and she belonged to one of the old Frankfurt families. His sons settled all across Europe and founded affiliate banks in Vienna, Naples, London, and Paris. Even so, they always came back to Frankfurt—their roots were in the Judengasse, and they never tried to hide it. These weren’t the only rich Jews, there were also the Speyers, the Rinds kopfs, the Mayers. Of course rabbis and Torah scribes lived in the Judengasse too, learned and educated men, but there were many more servants, day laborers, and beggars. In truth, there was everything, occasionally great riches and more often poverty and misery, sickness and hunger.”

  Alice thought about what her grandmother Helene Stern had told her and Klärchen about the old days: the many children who never had their own room, or toys, or nice clothes, and who had to sleep two to a bed, or three, or sometimes four—two at the head and two at the foot. About the women who often didn’t know how they were going to feed their many children, who had to do all the housework themselves, who had no maids or cooks, and who were so weakened by their many childbirths that they sometimes died in childbed. “Like your grandfather’s first wife,” Grandmother Helene always said then. “May the earth on her grave be light, her life was heavy enough.” After these words, she always raised her hand and wiped her eyes, and Alice and Klärchen looked away, embarrassed.

  Grandfather went on: “Life was merciless and hard. The only diversion was the holidays. The Jewish children looked forward to Purim all year.”

  Yes, Grandmother Helene had told stories about all the fun Purim games too: about how they would march through the Judengasse singing and dancing. She also told stories about the fires, though, that sometimes broke out because everything was so cramped and crowded. And about the hooligans who would tear through the Judengasse on the Christian holidays. The mothers would bring their children indoors and hide them in cupboards or under the beds until the danger passed.

  Alice’s grandfather had kept talking, even though she wasn’t listening—had described how the children dressed on Purim and the plays they would put on. Now he was saying: “When I was a boy, there was still Purim Vincent.”

  “P
urim Vincent?” Alice asked. “What’s that?”

  “In memory of the Fettmilch uprising,” he said.

  “Fettmilch? Whole milk?” Alice was confused. “Why not sour beer or skim milk?”

  “Fettmilch was someone’s name,” her grandfather explained, and began another story. “At the beginning of the seventeenth century there was an uprising of the people of Frankfurt against the city council.”

  The uprising, named after its leader, Vincent Fettmilch, broke out in 1612 when the coronation of Emperor Matthias took place in Frankfurt and the council, in accordance with a regulation of the Golden Bull, required the guilds to pay for the protection of the prince. The guilds countered with demands of their own, including a reduction in the number of Jews and a retroactive decrease in the interest rate on loans by Jews from 12 percent to 8 percent. The council, and even the emperor himself, rejected these demands, and a gang of rebels banded together under Vincent Fettmilch. Even when the interest rate was, in the end, actually lowered, they were not satisfied. Now they were demanding that every Jew who possessed less than fifteen thousand guldens’ worth of belongings leave the city. Since Emperor Matthias took the side of the Jews, Fettmilch and his followers turned to violence. They invaded the Judengasse, ransacked the houses, laid waste to the synagogue, and forced 1,380 Jews to leave the city, abandoning all their possessions. These Jews were taken in by the neighboring towns, such as Offenbach and Hanau.