Edith and Anne Frank

Edith Frank kept a baby picture book after the birth of her youngest daughter, in which she noted all sorts of things about Anne's health, appetite and growth. She continued to do this until 3 September 1929. After that, the book only functioned as a photo album.^[1]

When Anne reached puberty, the relationship between mother and daughter became difficult; downright bad, according to Anne's diary entries.^[2] Otto Frank later said in an interview, that Edith suffered more from this than Anne did and that it concerned him that his wife and Anne were not on good terms with each other.^[3] Miep Gies noticed the friction between Edith and Anne during the period in hiding, in that Edith was noticeably saddened by it.^[4] There are no sources that reflect Edith's views on this.

How Anne thought about her mother emerges mainly in her diary entries and therefore provides a subjective picture. Although there was a lot of friction between mother and daughter, Edith does not always come off badly and sometiimes Anne also expressed admiration. Characterising her housemates in a short story, she writes of her mother: 'In literature conversations, one can learn something from her.'^[5]   In her diary, too, she does speak positively of her mother: 'May I introduce: Mama Frank, the children's advocate!'^[6] Furthermore, Otto Frank also commented on the subject.

Anne's diary entries:

• "I often call her Momsy. Sometimes I shorten it to Moms: an imperfect Mom. I wish I could honor her by removing the "s." It's a good thing she doesn't realize this, since it would only make her unhappy."^[7]
• "Mother does sense that Margot loves her much more than I do, but she thinks I'm just going through a phase."^[8]
• "Thank goodness the others notice nothing of my innermost feelings, except that every day I'm growing cooler and more contemptuous of Mother, less affectionate to Father and less willing to share a single thought with Margot; I'm closed up tighter than a drum."^[9]

• "Except that Margot and I are rather tired of our parents. Don't get me wrong. I still love Father as much as ever and Margot loves both Father and Mother (...)."

  ^[10]
• "Mother's against me and I'm against her. Father turns a blind eye to the silent struggle between Mother and me. Mother is sad, because she still loves me, but I'm not at all unhappy, because she no longer means anything to me."^[11]

Other sources:

• "Naturally, I (=Otto Frank) was concerned that my wife and Anne were not on good terms. In reality, she was an excellent mother, for whom the children were paramount. She often complained that Anne was against everything she did, but it comforted her to know that Anne confided in me. It was often difficult for me to mediate between Anne and her mother. On the one hand, I did not want to hurt my wife, but it was also often not easy to reprimand Anne when she was rude and ill-mannered towards her mother. After such a scene, I usually waited a while, then took Anne aside and then talked to her like an adult."^[12]
• "I was very saddened to read how harshly Anne sometimes wrote about her mother. In her anger over some disagreement, she let her feelings run wild without any restraint. It pained me to see how often Anne had misjudged her mother's intentions. In any case, it was a relief for me to read in later notes that Anne recognised that it had also been her fault that she and her mother so often could not tolerate each other."^[12]
• From camp companion Rosa de Winter, Otto Frank hears what the relationship between Edith and her daughters was like in Auschwitz: "On the way back, I met a fellow prisoner of my wife, who told me that she had died of exhaustion and malnutrition in January. She also told me that Margot, Anne and their mother had remained close and supportive of each other all this time, and that it had always been Anne who had encouraged the two others."^[12]

Camp companion Bloeme Evers-Emden remarked about the time in Auschwitz-Birkenau: "There were always the three of them, mother and daughters."^[13]