Anne Frank was born June,12th 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany. She was the second daughter of Otto, a decorated German military officer who served in WWI, and Edith Frank. Being German born, bought the family very little comfort due to the spread of severe persecution of all Jewish citizens following the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler.
ANNE FRANK’S FAMILY FLEE GERMANY:
Between 1933 and 1939 over 300,000 Jews fled Germany to escape the hatred and violence that they were subjected to on a daily basis. The Frank family permanently relocated to Amsterdam in 1934 where Otto Frank was pursuing business opportunities.
In 1940 Germany invaded the Netherlands and the Frank family once again was subjected to discrimination and anti-Semitism. They struggled to survive with most Jewish owned businesses being taken over by the occupation government.
THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK:
Anne received a book she used as a diary for her thirteenth birthday and began recording the changes in Amsterdam since the German occupation. Anne’s older sister Margot was selected for relocation to a work camp, and this forced Otto Frank to place his family in hiding. On July 6, 1942 Anne Frank and her entire family were forced into hiding within secret rooms constructed above Otto’s business.
This cramped, poorly furnished, living space was to be the Franks and four family friends sanctuary for the next two years. In this time, Anne was to write the most famous diary in history and chronicle and express how lonesome, miserable, and spiritually restricted her confinement was.
The Diary of Anne Frank is considered one, if not the, most important document to survive the Holocaust. She was expressive, vibrant and vigorous in her narration and in her verification of the ways Jews were treated in occupied countries and of her own teenage emotional turmoil’s.
BETRAYED AND SENT TO AUSCHWITZ:
In hiding for two years, the end came on August 4th of 1944. A traitor, (never identified) sold out the refugees, probably for money or favors. The Franks were arrested by secret police and deported to Poland where they were detained in the Nazi’s most infamous death camp, Auschwitz.
The Diary of Anne Frank was discarded as refuse upon the floor where it remained until the end of the war.
The German’s didn’t recognize it’s significance and the diary was preserved and would later become a work of profound significance to Holocaust historians.
Anne, upon arriving at Auschwitz along with all the other young women over fifteen (all younger children were immediately executed) were stripped, had their heads shaved and were branded with identifying marks and were placed in over crowed barracks to await their fate.
BERGEN-BELSEN:
In October, both Margot and Anne along with 8,000 other women were sent to Lower Saxony in Germany to the concentration camp there. Bergen-Belsen in contrast to Auschwitz was a forced labor camp as opposed to a death factory. But disease and starvation in the long run are just as effective killers as bullets and poison gas.
It’s estimated that over 50,000 Jews died at Bergen-Belsen between the years 1943-1945. True and accurate estimates were made difficult because most of the victims were buried in mass graves dug and covered over with bulldozers.
REQUIEM:
The Frank family suffered a terrible fate with only one family member to survive the concentration camp experience and live to tell the world about what happened through the eyes of a teenage Jewish girl, Anne Frank.
At Bergen-Belsen disease was rampant and Margot and Anne became sick. In March of 1945 (the exact day is unknown) Margot who had been ill for some time fell from her bunk and died on the floor. A few days later Anne, who had lost all hope and believed her entire family dead, also died of typhus and despair just a few weeks before the camp was liberated by the British on April, 15th 1945.
Both Otto and Edith Frank remained at Auschwitz when separated from their children. Edith later died of starvation some time after her daughters were relocated to Bergen-Belsen. Otto was the sole survivor of the Frank family.
He returned to The Netherlands after the war and retrieved Anne’s diary. He was astounded by the elegance of his daughters words and worked for years to publish the diary. His persistence paid off and the diary was published and brought to the attention of the world.
Up until his death in 1980 at the age of 91, Sadly Otto spent the remainder of his life in court defending the authenticity of his daughters diary from skeptics (mostly anti-Semites) who claimed the diary was a forgery being used as Jewish propaganda.
Otto won all his court battles and proved that The Diary of Anne Frank was indeed an original work created solely by his teenage daughter during the Holocaust.
Resources: The Everything WWII Book
by David White & Daniel Murphy Ph.D.
Adams Media 2002
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