Walter Holländer

Walter Holländer was the second son of Abraham Holländer and Rosa Holländer-Stern and youngest brother of Edith Frank-Holländer.^[1]

Like the other children from Abraham Holländer's family, Walter first attended the Jüdische Volksschule in Aachen.^[2] Possibly he attended the Aachen gymnasium like his brother Julius, followed by private financial-economic studies with a professor at the Technical University, in preparation for a position in B. Holländer, their father's company. In May 1916 he became manager of the Waggonfabrik Heine & Holländer G.m.b.H., a company that produced and repaired locomotives, wagons of all kinds, trams, buses and trucks founded in 1914 by Abraham Holländer and Karl Heine in Elze, near Hanover.^[3]

Walter mostly spent time with his brother Julius, who was three years older. After the death of their father, they jointly managed the family firm B. Holländer. Both brothers were unmarried and lived at home with their parents. It is said that Walter may have been homosexual. On a page that she covered up, Anne Frank wrote: "All men, if they are normal, go with women, women like that accost them on the street and then they go together. In Paris they have big houses for that. Papa has been there. Uncle Walter is not normal".^[4] According to Anne Frank biographer Melissa Müller, Walter's homosexuality was no secret within the Hollander family.^[5] In 1954 it was said of one of Anne's uncles that he had been rambunctious and unpredictable as a child and was later regarded as "rather peculiar".^[6]

When their mother sold the family home on Liebfrauenstrasse in Aachen in 1933, she moved to Monheimsallee together with Julius and Walter. Later, in 1935, they also moved with their mother to Pastorplatz. They loved children, often visited the Frank family in Frankfurt and took Margot and Anne in the car to Aachen.^[7] After the Frank family emigrated to Amsterdam, Walter and Julius drove Margot from Aachen to Amsterdam, while Anne continued to live with grandmother Rosa Holländer-Stern for a while.^[8]

After the Nazis took power in 1933, Walter Holländer's powers as manager of the Waggonfabrik Heine & Holländer were revoked.^[9] Walter and Julius tried to keep the family firm going in an uncertain political and economic climate, but after the November Pogrom of 1938, this was no longer possible. Both were arrested after Kristallnacht.^[10] The fact that Julius had been injured during World War I saved him from being sent to a concentration camp, but Walter was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.^[11] Thanks to Julius, who had submitted an application to the Dutch embassy and managed to arrange a surety from his brother-in-law Otto Frank, Walter Holländer was released from Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 1 December 1938.^[12] Due to the Verordnung über den Einsatz des jüdischen Vermögens of 3 December 1938, the Holländers were forced to cease their business activities. On 16 January 1939, the B. Hollander company was liquidated;^[13] the property was 'Aryanized'.^[14]

Otto Frank managed to get permission to get Walter sent to a Dutch refugee camp.^[15] He arrived in the Netherlands via Nijmegen on 26 December 1938, and travelled on to Rotterdam.^[16] On 27 December 1938 the Population Register of Amsterdam listed him as a resident of Camp Zeeburg.^[17] He stayed in this camp for almost a year, which he was only allowed to leave for short periods of time, and then only with written permission to visit Huize Oosteinde, a kind of German-Jewish cultural center that had opened in January 1937 and where refugees could read, study and participate in sports activities. He may have taken an English course there. After waiting almost a whole year for his visa for the United States, he left for the United States on 17 December 1939 with the SS Volendam.^[18]

In the USA, Walter, like Julius, settled in Massachusetts, where he found work as a casual laborer at the E.F. Dodge Paper Box Company, a cardboard factory in Leominster near Boston, while Julius worked night shifts in Canton, 40 miles away, as an oven man at the Canton Japanning Company, a company that produced patent leather. Walter earned US$20 a week and Julius US$28. They lived in small, furnished rooms, both near their work.^[19]

Walter and Julius Holländer were granted US citizenship on 13 November 1944.^[20] Even after the end of the war, they had to make ends meet as low-paid factory workers, living in extremely modest conditions in furnished rooms near Boston.^[21] When they received the news that their sister Edith and her two children Margot and Anne Frank had died in the German concentration camps, they were inconsolable. They found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that their immediate family had been murdered: "Our lives are empty now. Edith and the girls was all we had", Julius wrote to Otto Frank in the summer of 1945.^[22]

In 1963 he and his brother Julius transferred one hunderd dollars to support the work of the Anne Frank House.^[23] That same year the brothers moved to New York, where they lived more or less like hermits. Small consolation was that in 1956 he and Julius each received a monthly allowance of DM 600 as compensation to victims of Nazi persecution.^[24] His physical health also had gotten worse: he had developed arthritis and diabetes. Furthermore, he had lung problems and suffered from nerves. He ate poorly and smoked a lot.^[25] In June 1963 he stopped working for health reasons.^[26]

After Julius's fatal accident in 1967, Walter posted an obituary in Aufbau.^[27] He himself died a year later at the age of 70.

Source personal data.^[28] Addresses: Liebfrauenstrasse 5, Aachen; Bahnhofstrasse 54, Elze (near Hannover);^[29]  69 Merriam Avenue, Leominster, Massachussets, USA (1941),^[30]  24 Oak Avenue, Leominster, Massachussets.^[31]