Amalie Frank, or Amalie Sahm, was born on February 21, 1862 in Braunsbach am Kocher as the daughter of the glazier Salomon Sahm and his wife Jetta into a long-established Jewish family from Braunsbach. Her family had been documented here since at least the middle of the 18th century.
“Braunsbach, beautifully situated in the valley of the River Kocher, had a Jewish tradition dating back to the early 17th century. In 1843, almost 300 Jewish people lived in the village, after which there was emigration and emigration, comparable to many other Jewish rural communities. “¹ But even when Amalie was born here, the Jewish population was still almost 20%. “Most of the Braunsbach Jews traditionally worked as cattle dealers, grocers or established merchants. The town was a center of regional Jewry: the seat of a district rabbinate since 1823 and a Jewish elementary school since 1834. “²
She was the third of eight children, but at least four of her siblings died before they reached the age of three, so these births and deaths probably shaped her early childhood years.³
On October 23, 1888, Amalie married the Edelfingen cattle dealer Salomon Frank. The fact that in later years he became the head of the Edelfingen Jewish community points to his social and religious standing. And because the synagogue wardens had to maintain the synagogue building from their own resources if necessary, this office was usually filled by a wealthy person.
As a result, the family was respected and wealthy – and grew steadily. Amalie or Malie gave birth to a total of seven children, but her mother’s fate was repeated here: of the seven children, only the four first-born reached adulthood. In 1898, twins died just one day after birth and the son born a year later also died in the first month of life.
In 1934, at the age of 70, her husband Salomon died and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Unterbalbach.
After the two daughters Getta and Bella had already married in 1921 and 1924 and had therefore moved away, their son Moses followed in 1936. He emigrated to Argentina.
The next farewell came in September 1939. Amalie’s son Jakob, who had taken over the cattle business from his father, emigrated to the USA. Unfortunately, he was no longer able to bring his family Berta and the children Gertrud, Ruth and Salomon with him. He died in the USA in August 1941; his family were among the deportees who were deported from Stuttgart to Riga in 1941 and murdered there.
A year after his son Jakob emigrated to the USA, Amalie Frank also moved away.
She moved to Frankfurt and the question arises as to why a 78-year-old widow would leave her ancestral community. The reasons were probably manifold: firstly, her son was no longer there and secondly, the housing situation for all Jews increasingly deteriorated from 1939 at the latest. At the same time, many Jews hoped that they would be better protected from repression in the anonymity of the big city – the obligation to wear a Jewish star did not exist until September 1941.
In the case of Amalie Frank, however, there was probably another reason. Apparently at least her daughter Getta, married name Decker, was still living in the town in 1939.
We do not know whether her daughter Bella, who had married in Frankfurt in 1924, was still living there at that time.
Amalie lived in Frankfurt for two years before she was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on August 18, 1942.
And this is where their lives came together again. Together with her former neighbors, the Bierig couple, and her brother Falk, she was deported to the Treblinka extermination camp on 26 September, where they were murdered.

1 https://stolpersteine-goeppingen.de/suessen/sahm-falk/

2 Ibid.

3 Like her, her youngest brother Falk (*1872) became a victim of Nazi terror and was murdered in Treblinka in 1942.