Meeting Rachel Frankfoorder in Bergen-Belsen

Rachel Frankfoorder, like the Frank family, was put on a transport to Auschwitz, where, like Anne, Margot and Auguste van Pels, she was eventually selected for transport to Bergen-Belsen on 30 October 1944 . The transport left on 1 November 1944 and arrived at Bergen-Belsen camp on 3 November 1944, where Rachel Frankfoorder was allocated number 7356 and ended up in the same hut as Anne and Margot.^[1] She recalled the moment she saw Anne and Margot again in Bergen-Belsen: "Their parents weren't there. You didn't ask about that because you actually knew... given your own experience with parents, brothers and so on, yes, you have an inkling, nothing more. The Frank girls were almost unrecognisable because their hair had been cut off, their hair was much closer cropped than ours, how that could be I don't know. And they were cold, just like all of us. It was winter and you had no clothes. So all the factors for illness were there. They in particular were very sick."^[2]

Rachel Frankfoorder stayed close to Anne and Margot in Bergen-Belsen and saw how the sisters became increasingly ill: "You could really see them dying, both of them," she recalled seeing the typical symptoms of typhus progressing more and more clearly in the two girls. The girls showed "a kind of apathy, with occasional upturns, until they too became so ill that there was no hope".^[3] A short time later, she noticed she no longer saw Anne and Margot, and assumed they had died.^[4]

On 7 February 1945, Rachel Frankfoorder, like Auguste van Pels, was transported to Raguhn women's camp.