Dr. med.
Alfred Frank
1882 - 1943

“Born on 27.7.1882 in Bad Dürkheim, I attended the Progymnasium in my hometown, as well as the humanistic grammar school in Neustadt a.H., which I graduated from in July 1901. I entered the University of Heidelberg 1901 / 02 in the winter term to study medicine, then passed the Tentamen physicum in Würzburg at the end of the fifth semester. In summer semester 1904 I fulfilled the first half of my military service in Strasbourg i. Alsace, then continued my studies in Berlin and Munich [since the summer semester of 1905, note H Je], where I completed the medical state examination in January 1907. I took the oral doctoral examination on January 29, 1907. I spent my practical year in Berlin at the Municipal Hospital Am Urban (Professor Fränkel’s department) and at the Medical Polyclinic Charité Berlin with Hermann Senator [Hermann Senator was Head of the III. Department of Internal Medicine of the Charité, note H Je],” says Alfred Frank in his curriculum vitae within his medical thesis ( Dissertationsschrift ).

His father was the merchant Hermann Frank (1842-1912) from Bad Dürkheim, his mother Frieda (Fridoline) Frank, née Oppenheimer (1847-1916), from Saarland. The family was of Jewish faith. The grave of Alfred Frank’s parents is preserved in the Jewish cemetery in Wachenheim on the Weinstrasse, not far from Bad Dürkheim.

Frank received his doctorate from the University of Munich with his thesis “A case of congenital fibromas on the finger and contributions to the case history of finger tumors”. Frank wrote the thesis under Wilhelm Herzog in the Department of Surgery at von Hauner’s Children’s Hospital in Munich.

Education and place of work

Frank received his medical license in 1908. It is not yet documented at which institution Alfred Frank completed his further training after his practical year. Since 1911 he worked as an assistant doctor in Ismar Boas’ private clinic at Trautenaustrasse 5 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, where he received his qualification for the new field of gastroenterology.

In the 1914 Reich Medical Calendar ( Reichsmedizinalkalender ) Alfred Frank is mentioned for the first time as a practicing doctor for internal medicine and as a specialist for stomach, intestinal and metabolic diseases at Meineckestrasse 25 in Berlin-Charlottenburg with the symbols for both specialist areas.

Frank married the widow Gertrud Else Baruch, née Meyer, in Berlin in 1911, who brought her eight-year-old daughter Eva Charlotte Baruch into the marriage.

1933

As a Jew, Frank was exposed to persecution by the National Socialists since spring 1933. When his medical license was revoked on September 30, 1938, he was licensed as a “medical practitioner” ( so called “Krankenbehandler” ) exclusively for Jewish patients in Berlin from October 1, 1938.

He practiced until the beginning of 1943. Alfred Frank was arrested during the November pogrom of 1938 and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp until December 21, 1938.

Since January 1, 1939, Alfred and Gertrud Frank had to add Israel and Sara to their first names (NS -law on the change of surnames, August 17, 1938, RGBl. 1938, I, p. 1044).

The daughter of Alfred Frank’s wife, 38-year-old Eva Charlotte Baruch-Silberstein [born April 6, 1903], committed to suicide because of the anti-Jewish persecution. She died on June 4, 1941 in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin following the effects of sleeping pill poisoning. Alfred Frank’s wife Gertrud died on December 27, 1942 in Berlin. At that time, the couple lived at Niebuhrstrasse 77 in Berlin. According to Alfred Frank’s step-granddaughter Irene Silberstein-Frank, Gertrud Else Baruch-Frank took her own life because of the threat of deportation [see Alfred Frank compensation file, Berlin, sheet D 2].

Alfred Frank was deported on March 12, 1943 at the age of 60 on the 36th Eastern transport from Berlin to the Auschwitz concentration camp and was murdered there.

In Bad Dürkheim, a memorial plaque has commemorated the town’s former Jewish residents since 2010. Among them there is the name of Dr. Alfred Frank.

Alfred Frank’s step-granddaughter Irene Silberstein, born May 2, 1927, was deported to the Theresienstadt / Terezin ghetto on October 2, 1942 at the age of 15 together with her father Dr. Friedrich Silberstein. From there she was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp on October 6, 1944 as part of the so-called autumn transports. Since December 1944 she had to do forced labor in the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and later in its Merzdorf subcamp in the Giant Mountains in former Lower Silesia, now Marciszów, Poland. Irene Silberstein was liberated by Soviet soldiers on May 9, 1945.

She first went to Berlin. In May 1946, at the age of 19, she was able to emigrate from Bremen to the USA on the SS Marine Perch following a stay in the Deggendorf camp for displaced persons. She arrived at New York on May 23, 1946. There, in April 1948, she married Heinrich Frankenstein, a native of Berlin, who took the name Henry Frank in the USA.
Irene Frank died in April 2021 at the age of 93. Her grave is in the Jewish Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, Bergen County, New Jersey.