Irma Würzburger - Holländer

Irma Holländer was a daughter of Caroline 'Lina' Hollander, a sibling of Edith's father.^[1] Caroline was married to her cousin Joseph Holländer, a son of Moises Holländer, a broher of Abraham''s father Benjamin.

Lina and Joseph Holländer initially lived in Eschweiler-Röthgen, where their six children - Irma, Erich, Henriette, Dina, Eugen and Elsbeth - were born.^[2] Around 1905, the family moved to Aachen. Irma and Elsbeth were two of the cousins Edith went to school with in Aachen and played tennis with as a youg woman.^[3] Irma was also was of the guests at the wedding of Otto Frank en Edith Holländer on 8 May 1925. On that occasion she was accompanied not only by her mother Caroline and sister Dina, but also by her husband Julius Würzburger, whom she had married  in 1921.^[4]

Irma and Julius had two children: a daughter, named Dorothee Sophie (1923), and a son called Franz (1925). Following the Nazi power takeover, Franz was sent to a boarding school in Chateaux d'Oex, Switserland.^[5] His parents were held prisoner in a concentration camp for a while. In spring 1939, Dorothee was sent to the Netherlands in a Kindertransport. There she was stopped at the Dutch border and subsequently detained in four different refugee camps, a former prphange among them. Anne Frank and her father visited the orphanage several times and Anne always used to bring peanuts. Dorothee also met Margot.^[6]

Following Irma and Julius's escape, the took refuge in England. Five days before the German invansion in May 1940, Dorothee managed to leave Holland and join her parents in England.^[6] Franz travelled from Switserland to France and succeeded in making one of the last crossings of the English Channel, two days before the Nazis occupied France in May 1940, and was reunited with his parents and sister.^[5] Then Irma, Julius and their two children moved to the United States. They left from Liverpool on the SS Samaria to New Yor, where they arrived on 21 Augustus 1940.^[7] They settled in New York, and changed their last name to Wills.

In the U.S., Dorothee followed a career a a  model, changed her first name to Monica, and married Prague born Frank Smith, who had fled to Shanghai in 1938 in order to escape Nazi persecution. heu had two children: Nicole and Tony, who died young.^[6]

Franz, Frank by now, attended Stuyvesant High School in the years 1940-1943 and in 1944 began studying  chemical engineering at New York University. He He enlisted in the US Army in 1946. While in the Army, an explosive device detonated in his face when he was working to disarm it, requiring extensive surgery. He was honorably discharged from Valley Forge Hospital in Pennsylvania in 1947. He completed his studies at NYU in 1948 and went on to study at Columbia University and Stevens Institute of Technology, where he received a Master of Science in powder metallurgy and management..^[5]

Source personal data .^[8]