After her arrest, Mrs. Frank was taken with her family to Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam and the Westerbork reception camp. There, according to an eyewitness, she was very quiet. "She seemed numbed all the time. . . . Edith Frank could have been a mute. She said nothing at work, and in the evenings, she was always washing underclothing. The water was murky and there was no soap, but she went on washing, all the time."
Like the other members of the group, Mrs. Frank was included in the last shipment of people to be sent to Auschwitz from Holland in early September 1944. At Auschwitz, she was still with Anne and Margot, though separated from Mr. Frank.
On October 30, 1944, there was a "selection" among the women at Auschwitz, and the younger and healthier ones were sent on to the Belsen concentration camp. Anne and Margot were included in this group, while Mrs. Frank was left behind. The events which she had been through, the hunger, and the privation, had unhinged her mind, and she refused to eat. She began collecting what few crusts of bread she could find and hiding them in her bed, saying that they were for her husband. The bread spoiled, but still she continued to hoard it, unwilling or unable to eat. She was forty-five years old when she died in her bed in Auschwitz on January 6, 1945, ten days before the SS guards fled from the camp.
