Biography
Flora Frank (born Flora Winter), the mother of the donor, is the daughter of Solomon and Hedwig (Sichel) Winter. She was born December 29, 1912, in Wittelshofen, Germany, where her family had lived for centuries, and her father worked as a cattle dealer. She had two older sisters, Marta (b. 1890) and Gerda (b. 1903). In 1937 Flora moved to Munich in preparation for her emigration to America. She came to New York the following year under the sponsorship of her cousin, Herbert Winter. Flora supported herself as a chambermaid prior to her marriage to Siegfried Frank in 1940. All of Flora's immediate family perished in the Holocaust. Her father died in Theresienstadt and her mother in Auschwitz. The only members of her extended family to survive were her two nieces, Bianca Bravman and Ruth Danzig, who escaped on Kindertransports in 1939. Ruth was the daughter of Flora's sister, Gerda Danzig who perished at the age of 40. Flora later brought Ruth over to the United States and the Franks raised her.
Siegfried, the son of Hermann and Theresa Frank, was born in 1902 in Buttenwiesen, Germany, where his father was a kosher butcher. Siegfried had four siblings: Hedwig (b. 1902), Karl (b. 1904), Ernst (b. 1908) and Ludwig (b. 1912). During Kristallnacht, Siegfried was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp and then released two months later in January 1939. In April he immigrated to the United States, where he found work as a wholesale butcher in Brooklyn. Both of his parents and all four of his siblings perished during the war.
