QUARANTINE BLOG # 521

September 2, 2021

Tuesday’s “This Day” blog mentioned Anne Frank, the young diarist who died in a Nazi death camp, and Amy remarked about her life. If I have earlier written about her story, I didn’t put it in the QB Index, but it is one that bears repeating. Here is the incredible story of Anne Frank (this retelling takes the entire blog today).

Annelies Marie Frank is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust.  She gained fame posthumously with the 1947 publication of The Diary of a Young Girl, later called The Diary of Anne Frank, (originally Het Achterhuis in Dutch; English: The Secret Annex), in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world’s best-known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.

Anne in May 1942; this photograph was taken shortly before she went into hiding.

For her thirteenth birthday, Anne received a diary. “Maybe one of my nicest presents,” she wrote about the red-checked book. On the cover page, she wrote: “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support. Anne Frank. 12 June 1942.”

First edition of the diary.

Two days later, she wrote the next entry. She wrote about what happened and who were there, her birthday party, her gifts, her friends, being in love, her family history, and her school class. 

Anne’s father, Otto, was a German businessman. As the tide of Nazism rose in Germany and anti-Jewish decrees encouraged attacks on Jewish individuals and families, Otto decided to evacuate his family. In August 1933, they moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands where he operated two companies. After Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Otto was forced by the Germans to give up his companies. The systematic deportation of Jews from the Netherlands started in the summer of 1942, and Otto took his family into hiding on July 6, 1942 in the upper rear rooms of one of his factories. A bookcase concealed the entrance. The apartment became a refuge for Otto, his wife, Edith, their daughters, Anne and Margot, and four other people.

The building where the Franks and their friends hid.

The Nazis had started deporting Jews from the Netherlands, first to the Westerbork transit camp, and from there they were transported to concentration and extermination camps across Eastern Europe.

Jewish residents of the Netherlands lined up for transport.

By the autumn of 1943, most Dutch Jews had been deported. But many Jews were still in hiding and the Nazis wanted to find them. Because the Dutch police was not cooperative enough for their liking, they set up special divisions with pro-German police officers to hunt down Jews. Among those officers were confirmed anti-Semites, as well as opportunists, who were primarily interested in the premium they received for every Jew they caught, and in the belongings of the people in hiding and those accommodating them, which they secretly took during the raids.

Dutch policeman (right) watches Jews boarding the train to Westerbork. Summer of 1943, Amsterdam.

Anne’s little group hid for two years, until their discovery in August 1944. It is not known if an informant, or a chance discovery by authorities, ended their period of refuge. After being imprisoned in Amsterdam, the Jewish prisoners were sent to the Dutch transit camp of Westerbork and finally to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where in September Otto Frank was separated from his wife and daughters. 

Barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

On October 30, 1944, approximately 1,000 women, including Anne and her sister, Margot, from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp were selected for forced labor in the German war industry at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Their mother, Edith, was left behind in Auschwitz.

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The women were put up in tents, but these tents were badly damaged a few days later in a storm. They were then put in barracks where there was very little space. The camp was filthy, wet, and cold. People were hungry, unable to keep themselves clean, and contracted infectious and deadly diseases such as typhus. Because more and more Jewish prisoners were taken in, the camp became overcrowded and things got worse and worse.

Women prisoners in Bergen-Belsen.

In the winter of 1944-1945, the situation in Bergen-Belsen deteriorated. There was little food, and the camp was filthy and crawling with vermin. Many prisoners fell ill. Margot and Anne Frank contracted spotted typhus and died in February 1945. The dates of their deaths was never recorded – a woman who was with them at the time later told Otto as much as she remembered.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, Otto Frank traveled back to the Netherlands over the next six months and searched diligently for his family and friends. By the end of 1945, he realized he was the sole survivor of those who had hidden in the secret annex.

Between 1941 and 1945, approximately 60,000 Jews were deported from Amsterdam by the Nazis. Most of them were killed. Their homes were often taken over by other Dutch people, but some stood empty and were boarded up; during the winter these were often stripped for firewood. 

A row of houses in Amsterdam, 1945.

Hermine “Miep” Gies was one of the Dutch citizens who hid and cared for Anne Frank and other Jews in an annex over Otto Frank’s factory.  She retrieved Anne’s diary after the family was arrested, and kept the papers safe until Otto Frank returned from Auschwitz in June 1945. Gies had stored Anne’s papers in the hopes of returning them to the girl, but gave them to Otto Frank, who compiled them into a diary first published in 1947.

First edition of “The Secret Annex” quickly sold out, and a second edition was published six months later.

In 1960, the old hiding place officially became the Anne Frank Museum. When the Franks and the others were captured the Nazis removed all of the furniture. Otto Frank insisted that the rooms remain empty.

Otto Frank in the Secret Annex.

Anne’s diary began as a private expression of her thoughts. She candidly described her life, her family and companions, and their situation, while beginning to recognize her ambition to write fiction for publication. In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by a member of the Dutch government in exile, who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people’s oppression under German occupation. Anne decided to submit her work when the time came. She began editing her writing, removing some sections and rewriting others, with a view to publication. She created pseudonyms for the members of the household and the helpers. Otto Frank used her original diary, known as “Version A,” and her edited version, known as “version B,” to produce the first version for publication. Although he restored the true identities of his own family, he retained all of the other pseudonyms.

From Anne's diary.

In her introduction to the diary’s first American edition, Eleanor Roosevelt described it as “one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read.” John F. Kennedy discussed Anne Frank in a 1961 speech, and said, “Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank.” In the same year, the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg wrote of her: “one voice speaks for six million – the voice not of a sage or a poet but of an ordinary little girl.”

Annelies Marie Frank

Psalm 83:1-5

Do not keep silent, O God!

Do not hold Your peace,

And do not be still, O God!

For behold, Your enemies make a tumult;

And those who hate You have lifted up their head.

They have taken crafty counsel against Your people,

And consulted together against Your sheltered ones.

They have said, “Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation,

That the name of Israel may be remembered no more.”

Psalm 102:1-2, 18-22

Hear my prayer, O Lord;

let my cry come to you!

Do not hide your face from me

    in the day of my distress!

Incline your ear to me;

    answer me speedily in the day when I call!

Let this be recorded for a generation to come,

    so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord:

that he looked down from his holy height;

    from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,

to hear the groans of the prisoners,

    to set free those who were doomed to die,

that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord,

    and in Jerusalem his praise,

when peoples gather together,

    and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

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