Otto Frank was not intensely concerned with religion, but he felt connected to liberal Judaism. Politically, he was moderate. He never attached himself to any party or political movement.

Up to 1933

Otto Frank grew up in Frankfurt's Westend district, a neighbourhood made up of about 20%, mostly liberal, Jews. His own family also belonged to the liberal Jewish denomination. His parents considered themselves primarily German 'Bildungsbürger', for whom Jewish faith played no important role.

According to Otto Frank, his grandmother had visited the synagogue on the occasion of her wedding and never again. He himself did not initially concern himself with religious matters either.^[1] This does not mean that the Franks had nothing to do with the Jewish community. At the Lessing grammar school, all students received religious instruction in their own faith. Otto Frank received Jewish lessons there. His teacher was Cäsar Seligmann, an old acquaintance of his father. Seligmann was the leading liberal rabbi of the Frankfurt Hauptsynagogue and the liberal Western Synagogue, which was consecrated in 1910. He was considered one of the leading representatives of the liberal Jewish movement in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.^[2] Otto's father Michael Frank knew him from Landau in the Palatinate, where they had both grown up. At Michael Frank's funeral in 1909, Seligmann gave a speech. This shows that the Franks had a clear connection to the Israelite congregation in their town.^[3]

Otto Frank often stated that he was not strongly interested in matters of faith and that he had a pragmatic attitude. "My parents-in-law had a Kosher household. Of course when my mother-in-law came we never had anything of pig. We adjusted and I worked with the liberal movement in Holland" .^[4] He also stated that his marriage and experiences with the Hitler regime had made him more aware of his background and made him feel more Jewish.^[5]

1933-1945

With Rabbi Mehler's arrival, Otto and Edith were closely involved in the formation of the Liberal Jewish Congregation (LJG) in Amsterdam. He was among some 40 members who submitted a declaration of support to Queen Wilhelmina in May 1938 to declare the liberal Jewish community an independent denomination.

Otto Frank was annoyed by the negative comments on Mehler and liberal Judaism in the Orthodox daily and weekly newspapers. For this reason, he cancelled his subscription to the Central Bulletin for Israelites through a letter. Otto Frank wrote: "I am a convinced Liberal Jew and I find the way your paper writes against Liberalism anything but distinguished". This letter was partially printed and commented on by the editors:

'Criticism of our magazine is always agreeable to us. But who gives you the right to express this criticism in a form that does not correspond to the facts. Certainly, we reject religious liberalism, but we have found among the Jews who immigrated here - and almost only among these are the 'convinced liberals' - the contact we have sought from the beginning. And that our efforts are right is proven by the success, even if one individual expresses his 'conviction' in his own form'.^[6]

Otto Frank, unlike his wife Edith, did not attend synagogue regularly. If he went, it was mainly on holidays. He later stated that, for his wife, he occasionally went to prayer services.^[7] Although he was not Orthodox, he had Orthodox friends, such as the Goslar family. According to Hanneli Goslar, Otto Frank had learned the kidush at her home:

'The Frank family came to us very often on Fridays to celebrate the Sabbath. Otto told me after the war that in Auschwitz, together with other Jewish prisoners, they wanted to recite the kidush (the prayer you say just before meals), but no one knew it by heart. But Otto Frank had heard the kidush with us so many times that he was the only one to hold the ceremony in Hebrew'.^[8]

Involvement in Jewish organisations after 1945

On 9 November 1945, an advertisement appeared in the Nieuw Israelitisch Weekblad calling on all members of the Liberal Jewish congregations in Amsterdam and The Hague and other interested parties to provide their names and addresses. Otto Frank responded on 17 November 1945: ''In response to your advertisement in the Nieuwe Israelitische Weekblad, I inform you that if a new Liberal Jewish congregation is established, I would be happy to join it'.^[9]

Other sources showing Otto Frank's connection to Judaism are:

• He was well acquainted with the president of the World Union of Progressive Judaism, Rabbi David Wice of Philadelphia.^[10]
• He donated two hundred and fifty Swiss francs to the Vereinigung für Religiös-Liberales Judentum in Bern in 1960,^[11] and in 1963.^[12]
• In April 1961, he donated five thousand guilders for the newly built synagogue of the Liberal Jewish Community. "It is my wish that this amount will be listed as a gift in memoriam Rosa Holländer, Anneliese Schütz, Rabbi Dr L. Mehler".^[13]
• In 1966, he was included in the 'Book of Founders' of the new Progressive Jewish Centre in Amsterdam.^[14]
• He continued to support the LJG: in 1972 he donated three thousand guilders and in 1973 twenty-five hundred guilders.^[15]
• He was patron of the Judaic Heritage Society in the Jewish year 5740 (roughly coinciding with the year 1980).^[16]
• He went to the World Union for Progressive Judaism as a delegate for the Liberal Jewish Congregation.^[17]
• According to a letter of condolence on behalf of the Liberal Jewish Community, Otto Frank was: 'like almost no other, devoted to Judaism in general and progressive Judaism in particular'.

Religious views

Otto Frank recognised the value of religion, without being truly religious himself.^[18] He had a universalist and strongly humanistic view of God, and after the war he carried prayers from different religions in his wallet.^[19]

Otto Frank did not see God as a father who cared about each of his children, but believed in some kind of higher power, which has arranged the world and its laws in such a way that man has the free choice to be good or bad. Gifted men like Moses, Jesus and Buddha give moral laws, but man himself chooses whether or not to follow them.^[20] Imperfect man can abuse this free will. If God always punished directly, there would be no free will either. In the long run, good will win and evil will destroy itself. 'Real belief is based on this justice,' says Otto Frank.^[21]

At his own request, although not in accordance with Jewish custom, Otto Frank was laid to rest and cremated after his death. He did not want to be buried in Basel, as there was only an Orthodox congregation there. Interment took place because Fritzi wanted to respond to the wishes of many to be able to say goodbye to Otto Frank.^[22]

Political views

Otto Frank rarely expressed himself explicitly on political issues, but correspondence shows that he was strongly anti-Communist.^[23] He spoke out in interviews against extremism of all directions and saw communism as being as great a danger as fascism. Nevertheless, he maintained good contacts with Jan Romein and Jacques Presser, among others. Romein was instrumental in the publication of Het Achterhuis and he knew Presser as a teacher at the Jewish Lyceum.^[24]

In 1952, when visiting America on the occasion of the presidential election, Otto Frank wore a pin of Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson.^[25] He described the atmosphere surrounding those elections in a letter to Miep Gies as "Alles reichlich meshugge ".^[26]

In 1975, Otto Frank entered into correspondence with Omar Assuli, a Palestinian imprisoned in Israel since 1970. He took this initiative after reading in a Swiss newspaper that Assuli was eager to correspond with Swiss citizens. Otto took a strongly pro-Israel stance towards Assuli. On 8 January 1976, when asked, he learned from the head of the "Inmate Department" that Assuli was imprisoned for an offence against state security.^[27] It is unclear whether Otto continued to write to Assuli thereafter. No letters are known from which this is evident.

Zionism and Israel

Otto Frank was ambivalent towards Zionism. He followed the movement with interest, and in the Secret Annex the people there read the book Palestina op de tweesprong ('Palestine on the Eve'), in which the British-Hungarian investigative journalist László Faragó described the Jewish-Arab tensions in the British protectorate of Palestine.^[28] When he and his other family members had serious discussions about emigration in 1933, he, like his mother and sister, rejected the idea of leaving for Palestine:

'Wir gehören dort nicht hin. Seit zweitausend Jahren leben wir Juden hier, in Deutschland. Wir sind gebildet, wir sind kultiviert, natürlich sind wir Juden, aber doch nicht orthodox. Wir haben nichts gemein mit den ostjüdischen Händlern und Fabrikarbeitern, unter denen es viele Zionisten gibt, weil sie keine andere Wahl haben, und wir haben erst recht nichts mit den ostjüdischen Rabbinern zu tun. Nein, wir können zwar in anderen europäischen Ländern leben, auch in Amerika, aber nicht in Asien.'^[29]

After the war, Otto Frank was strongly pro-Israeli. In the mid-1970s, he had a disagreement with the Anne Frank House about Israel. He made sure that explicit support for Israel's right to exist was included in the statutes.^[30] Yet he never seriously considered moving to Israel.^[31]