The 10th of May, 1940, World War 2, the Netherlands.
Nazi Germany invades Holland and the German Air Forces – the Luftwaffe – use paratroopers in
the capture of tactical points and to assist in the advance of ground troops across the country.
The invasion is accompanied by heavy aerial bombardment of Rotterdam and culminates on
the 14th of May with the destruction of its entire historic center. Because the Germans
threaten to bomb the city of Utrecht in the same way, the Dutch forces surrender one day later.
Soon after the Nazis start to occupy the whole country and pass new anti-Jewish laws which are
designed to exclude Jewish people from society and restrict their livelihood. 15,000 Jews who fled
from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands between 1933 and 1939 are once again under Nazi domination. One
of them is Otto Frank, whose daughter Anne would become one of the world’s most famous diarists.
After spending 762 long days in the Secret Annex and 1 month in Westerbork transit camp,
the 8 people from the Secret Annex were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on the
3rd of September 1944. Their train was the last one to leave Westerbork for this extermination
camp located in Nazi-occupied Poland. The train journey took three horrible days, during
which Otto and over a thousand others were packed closely together in cattle wagons. There was very
little food and water and no proper ventilation. Aside from a bucket, which was overflowing within
a few hours, there was no sanitary facility. The stench of urine and excrement added to the
humiliation and suffering of the deportees. Armed police guards accompanied the transport and they
had orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Nazi doctors checked
to see who would and who would not be able to do heavy forced labor. Around 350 people from the
Frank’s transport were immediately taken to the gas chambers and murdered. In total, out of 1,019
Jews who were deported to Auschwitz together with the Franks, only 45 men and 82 women survived.
While Otto ended up in a camp for men, his wife and daughters were sent to the
labor camp for women. Margot, chosen for slave labor, was forced to cut sods or carry stones.
At Auschwitz, Edith, Margot and Anne stayed together and depended on each other,
more than ever before. Survivors remembered Edith sharing her own small amount of bread with her 2
daughters. When Margot and Anne were temporarily isolated in a separate barracks because they
suffered from scabies, Edith and two fellow prisoners dug a hole to pass them some extra food.
After the separation on the Auschwitz-Birkenau platform, Otto stayed together with the men from
the Secret Annex. At first, Otto was put to work outside the camp in the 'Kommando Kiesgrube’,
a gravel mine. The gravel was used for construction projects. Then,
he was transferred to the 'Kommando Strassenbau', building roads outside the camp. When the frost
made working outdoors impossible, Otto ended up with less exhausting work: peeling potatoes.
Otto felt greatly supported by Peter van Pels, who would sometimes be able to get some extra
food through his job in the camp’s post office. He was also helped by other friends in the camp.
When at one point, Otto lost hope after he had been beaten, his fellow inmates,
with the help of a Dutch doctor, made sure that he was admitted to the sick barracks.
At the end of October 1944, Margot and Anne were put on a transport
to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Edith stayed behind at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex,
the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. SS units forced nearly
60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. These forced evacuations
of concentration camp inmates over long distances whilst under guard became known as death marches.
However, Otto stayed behind in the sick barracks. He was too weak to travel,
weighed only 52 kilogrammes and was in no condition to join.
Otto expected the prisoners remaining behind to be shot, but that did not happen.
On the 27th of January 1945, when the Soviet troops entered Auschwitz,
Otto Frank was liberated. On the way back to the Netherlands he found out about the death
of his wife Edith. She was 44 years old when she died on the 6th of January 1945,
only three weeks before the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Edith Frank died of starvation
and disease in the sick barracks of Auschwitz. From that moment on, all his hopes were pinned
on Anne and Margot. Otto hoped that his daughters Anne and Margot had somehow survived. He returned
to the liberated Netherlands on the 3rd of June 1945 - 9 days before what would have been Anne’s
16th birthday. To his great relief, the helpers of the Secret Annex had all survived the war.
However, all hope was lost one month later when Otto learned about the death of his daughters.
Margot and Anne both died in February 1945 owing to the effects of typhus.
It was initially believed that the sisters died a few weeks before the camp’s liberation on the 15th
of April 1945. However, it was later revealed that they may have died as early as February.
Because we do not know the exact date of Margot’s death, she was either 18 or
19 years old at the time. Her birthday was the same month that she died. Anne was 15.
4 other people from the Secret Annex - Peter,
Hermann and Auguste Van Pels as well as Fritz Pfeffer also perished.
I knew that Anne wrote a diary. She spoke about her diary, she left her diary with me at night
in a briefcase next to my bed. I had promised her never to look in. I never did.
When I returned and after I heard the news that my children would not come
back, Miep gave me diary which had been saved by I should say miracle.
It took me a very long time to read it and I must say I was very much surprised
about deep thoughts Anne had. Seriousness especially her self-criticism.
It was quite a different Anne I had known as my daughter. She never really showed
this kind of inner feeling. She talked about many things, we criticized many things,
but what really here feelings were I only could see from the diary. And my conclusion is as I
had been in very very good terms with Anne that most parents don't know really their children.
And so I know, too, that in reading a diary parents and teachers will learn a lot.
In Anne’s diary, Otto also read about Anne’s dreams to become a writer and journalist and
her intention to publish a novel about their life in the Secret Annex after the war would be over.
He wanted to have her diary published but so soon after the war, people wanted to look
forward rather than back. Eventually, Otto found a publisher and first 3,000
copies of Anne’s book - “Secret Annex” - were published in 1947. Otto wrote about
that first Dutch edition ‘Anne would have been so proud if she had lived to see it,’.
Since then, the book has been translated into over 70 languages. People all over the world
were introduced to Anne's story and in 1960, the hiding place which for 2 years became the home to
8 people who tried to survive the atrocities of the criminal Nazi regime, became a museum: the
Anne Frank House. By setting up the organisation in 1957 and opening up the hiding place in 1960,
Otto Frank realised his educational mission plans.
In an interview with Basler Magazin in 1979, Otto said about the mission of the organisation: ‘… the
organisation’s work is not limited to managing the House. It was set up to increase awareness
of the events of the dark years of the Second World War and the persecution of the Jews and
to fight discrimination, prejudice, and oppression in the world today.’
Otto‘s revenge was not only that he survived and lectured about the
hardship he endured during the Holocaust, but that his legacy and bravery will go
on through the Anne Frank House with which he was involved until his death.
Today, you can even visit the house in which Margot and Anne spent 761 long days. You can
also see Anne’s room that has walls brightened with picture postcards and movie stars which Anne
collected and see her original diary and other manuscripts which she wrote until her arrest.
In spite of the loyalty of his friends and the success of the diary in the Netherlands, Otto felt
that he would forever associate Amsterdam with his pain and loss. Thus, in 1952, he moved to Basel,
Switzerland, and one year later in Amsterdam, he remarried to Fritzi Geiringer. Fritzi already
had a daughter, Eva, who just like Anne, was born in 1929. As with Otto, both Fritzi and Eva
were the Holocaust survivors. They were liberated in January 1945 by the Russians, but Erich and
Heinz Geiringer, Fritzi's husband and son, had perished in the forced march to Mauthausen that
came just before the war ended. Fritzi and Eva returned to Amsterdam on 13 June 1945.
Countless readers of Anne's diary contacted Otto and some of them kept
corresponding with him over the years. Some of them became real friends of
Otto and his wife Fritzi. About the letters, Otto wrote: ‘I often end my letters by writing:
“I hope that Anne's book will impact the rest of your life so that insofar as it
is possible in your own circumstances, you will work for unity and peace.”’
Otto Frank was 91 years old when he passed away on the 19th of August 1980.
Shortly before his death, he said in an interview: ‘I am almost ninety now and my
strength is slowly fading. But the mission that Anne passed on, keeps giving me new
strength - to fight for reconciliation and for human rights across the world.’
Until the end of his life, Otto remained closely involved with the Anne Frank House,
which was founded to preserve Prinsengracht 263 and its Secret annex.
To build up a future you have to know the past. You see I'm pretty old now
but I am not a bitter man. Young people write to me asking questions. Many who are writing a diary
themselves calling their diary Anne's diary. They write to Anne as Anne wrote to Kitty.
And so especially in the time of adolescence
say get a lot of confidence in hope for their lives in reading about Anne and her experiences.
There were many tears shed for Otto Frank.
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