Raissa Itin was born in Lugansk, southern Russia, in 1886. Her parents were the grain trader Gregor Itin and his wife Katharina, nee Meeroff. Raissa had seven younger siblings. The family lived in Bjelaia Glina on the border of the Caucasus Mountains first and later in Rostov-on-Don. In 1905, the mother Katharina Itin moved to Berlin with her children, because Raissa and her brother were threatened with arrest in Russia because they took active part in politics. Raissa studied law in Berlin. In 1913 she received her doctorate in Heidelberg with a dissertation on child protection in criminal law. In Heidelberg she met Fitz Frank. They married in August 1914, just before Fritz Frank was drafted into military service. Raissa Frank moved to Neu-Isenburg in the home of the Jewish Women's Association for one year. Maybe there she supported Bertha Pappenheim and the work of the institution scientifically.

After the First World War, Raissa and Fritz Frank and their daughter Sophie moved to Heppenheim. In 1935 Fritz Frank emigrated to Palestine, where the son Hugo, born in 1918, had emigrated from Germany already in 1933 as a fifteen-year-old boy. Raissa and her daughter followed Fritz Frank a few months later. Raissa and Fritz Frank lived in Israel in Netanya. Raissa Frank died in 1975 in Israel.

Sources: Stadtarchiv Neu-Isenburg; Stadtarchiv Neu-Isenburg; Fritz Frank. Verschollene Heimat, Fritz Frank Werkausgabe, Bd. II, hrsg. vom Träger- und Förderverein Ehemalige Synagoge Rexingen in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kultur- und Museumsverein Horn a.N., Horb-Rexingen (Barbara Staudacher Verlag), 2017 (Text by Barbara Staudinger)