LONDON -- Elfriede "Fritzi" Frank, 93, who married the father of Anne Frank and helped him publicize his daughter's famous wartime diary, died Oct. 1 at her home here. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Elfriede Markovits was born in Vienna. She fled to the Netherlands with her first husband, Erich Geiringer, and their two children, Heinz and Eva, in 1938, after Adolf Hitler annexed the country into Nazi Germany. The family settled in Amsterdam and was a neighbor of the Frank family, and Eva become friends with Anne.
Like the Frank family, the Geiringers went into hiding in July 1942 after receiving a summons to be transported to a work camp in Germany. They were betrayed 23 months later and sent to Auschwitz, where Elfriede Frank's first husband and her son died. She and her daughter survived and were liberated by the Russians in January 1945.
On a train returning Auschwitz survivors to the Netherlands after the war, Eva recognized Otto Frank and introduced him to her mother. Frank was the sole survivor from his family.
"They helped each other come to terms with their losses. Fritzi was one of the people Otto consulted as to whether to publish Anne's diaries," said Gillian Walnes, executive director of the trust.
The diary, which chronicled how Anne and her family hid in a secret annex behind a movable bookcase in a house along an Amsterdam canal, was published in 1947 and became a modern literary classic and inspired numerous books, films and plays.
The couple were married in 1953 and settled in Basel, Switzerland.
A large part of their life after the war was spent informing the world of the horrors of the Holocaust and Anne's life in Amsterdam. After Otto's death in 1980, Mrs. Frank continued their work alone.
"She carried on correspondence with children all over the world. She continued that correspondence right into old age, until about three or four years ago," Walnes said.
Mrs. Frank is survived by her daughter and three granddaughters, all of whom live in Britain.
