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.
Otto Heinrich Frank was born on the 12th of May 1889 in Frankfurt,
then part of the German Empire. He was the second of four children of Michael Frank,
the owner of a business bank in Frankfurt, and Alice Betty Stern. They were liberal Jews and
valued Jewish traditions and holidays but did not observe all religious laws.
After high school, Otto briefly studied art history and went
on to do traineeships at various banks and at Macy's in New York.
After his father's sudden death in 1909
Otto returned to Germany and spent some time at a company that produced horseshoes.
The First World War began on the 28th of July 1914.
Otto Frank enlisted in the German Army in 1915 and served in a
‘Lichtmesstrupp' unit which analyzed where enemy artillery fire came from.
Otto’s unit also took part in the Battle of the Somme in which more than three million men fought.
One million were wounded or killed, making it one of the deadliest battles in human history.
By the end of the war, Otto Frank was a lieutenant and was awarded the Iron Cross.
After the First World War ended on the 11th of November 1918, Otto joined the family bank.
In 1924 he met Edith Holländer– a daughter of wealthy Jews trading in industrial equipment.
She was 12 years his junior. They fell in love and on the 8th of May 1925,
the couple celebrated their civil wedding in Aachen.
4 days later, on Otto's 36th birthday, they had their Jewish wedding in the Aachen synagogue.
The couple then moved to a new housing estate in Frankfurt am Main, where Margot,
their elder daughter, was born on the 16th of February 1926. Anne was born
three years later on the 12th of June 1929. The Franks were liberal Jews and lived in
an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various religions.
On the 24th of October 1929 the stock market crash marked the beginning of the
Great Depression in the United States which soon spread across the globe.
The Great Depression also played a role in the emergence of Adolf Hitler,
the leader of the Nazi Party, [ma byt bodka] While the Great Depression and German economic
conditions were not solely responsible for bringing Hitler to power, they helped
to create an environment in which he gained support and on the 30th of January 1933 Adolf
Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by the German President Paul von Hindenburg.
In 1933, about 600,000 Jews lived in Germany, less than one percent of the total population.
Most Jews in Germany were proud to be Germans. More than 100,000 German Jews including Otto
Frank had served in the German army during World War I, and many were decorated for their bravery.
Jews held important positions in government and taught in Germany's renowned universities.
Marriage between Jews and non-Jews was becoming more common and although German
Jews continued to encounter some discrimination in their social lives and professional careers,
many were confident of their future as Germans.
They spoke the German language and regarded Germany as their home.
On the 1st of April 1933, shortly after the Nazis came to power, the Nazi leadership
decided to stage an economic boycott against the Jews of Germany. This boycott, targeting Jewish
businesses and professionals, was the first nationwide, planned action against the Jews.
The boycott was both a reprisal and an act of revenge against atrocity stories
propaganda that German and foreign Jews, assisted by foreign journalists,
were allegedly circulating in the international press to damage Nazi Germany's reputation.
On the day of the boycott, the members of the SA, which was a paramilitary organization associated
with the Nazi Party, stood menacingly in front of Jewish-owned department stores and retail
establishments as well as the offices of professionals such as doctors and lawyers.
The Star of David was painted in yellow and black across thousands of doors and windows,
with accompanying antisemitic slogans.
Signs were posted saying "Don't Buy from Jews" and "The Jews Are Our Misfortune."
Acts of violence against individual Jews and Jewish property occurred throughout Germany.
However, the police intervened only rarely. Although the national boycott operation,
organized by local Nazi party chiefs, lasted only one day and was ignored by
many individual Germans who continued to shop in Jewish-owned stores, it marked the beginning
of a nationwide campaign by the Nazi Party against the entire German Jewish population. A week later,
the government passed a law restricting employment in the civil service to "Aryans."
Jewish government workers, including teachers in public schools and universities, were fired.
Because of business problems and growing antisemitism,
the Franks made a difficult decision to leave their country and emigrate to the Netherlands.
In September 1933, Otto founded a franchise for the Amsterdam branch of Opekta company that traded
in pectin, a gelling agent for making jam. The rest of the family moved to Amsterdam soon after.
The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled from Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939.
After the experiences in the Third Reich, the family soon felt at home in Amsterdam.
They were able to make a fresh start, could live their own life and feel free. The girls
enrolled in Dutch schools, made new friends and despite initial problems with the Dutch language,
they became excellent students, especially Margot.
While the girls seemed happy about their new life in the new country, for their
parents the situation was more challenging. Otto had to work hard to get his company going
and build a new life for his family. The financial situation of the family improved in 1938 when
Otto started a new company called Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs and spices.
Edith, concentrated on running the household,
struggled with a new language and had a hard time settling in the Netherlands.
In the meantime, Edith’s family, who had been left behind in Aachen, witnessed the violence and
destruction of the Kristallnacht which occurred on the 9th – 10th of November 1938, when the Nazi
leaders unleashed a series of coordinated violent riots against the Jews throughout Nazi Germany and
recently incorporated territories. The Nazi SA and German civilians not only ransacked Jewish homes,
businesses, synagogues, hospitals, and schools but the German SS and police sent almost
30,000 Jewish males to concentration camps, primarily Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.
Edith’s brother Julius escaped arrest because he had fought in the German army
and been injured in the First World War. However, Edith's other brother, Walter,
was arrested and briefly imprisoned in a concentration camp. Soon after,
both brothers emigrated to the United States via the Netherlands. Edith’s mother Rosa left Nazi
Germany as well. She came to the Netherlands and moved in with the family in March 1939.
Seeing the development in Nazi Germany, Otto looked into options for setting
up a business in Great Britain, but the plans never worked out.
World War 2 started on the 1st of September 1939. All of Otto and Edith’s hopes that
they would be safe in the Netherlands were dashed by the invasion of the German army in
May 1940. Desperate attempts to emigrate to the United States, with the help of Edith’s bothers
Julius and Walter as well as Otto Frank’s American friend Nathan Strauss, also failed.
The life of the Franks, who were once again under Nazi domination, changed completely.
The criminal Nazi regime from which they ran away in 1933 finally caught up with them in
the country which had become their new home and had made them feel free to live their own life.
The Netherlands became an occupied territory, and it did not take long for the Nazis to
begin introducing new anti-Semitic laws and regulations that restricted the lives of Jews.
Jewish civil servants were fired and Jewish businesses as well as
the Jews themselves had to be registered. They could no longer visit parks, cinemas,
or non-Jewish shops. Many places thus became off-limits to Margot and Anne who
could not even go to same school as all Jewish children had to go to separate Jewish schools.
According to new laws, Jews were no longer allowed to run their own businesses and the Nazis forced
Otto to give up his companies. However, he had managed to transfer control of his
businesses to his employees soon enough to keep his companies out of Nazi hands.
But the situation only continued to get worse and in 1941 Jewish men were arrested during
raids and then deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Among them were friends
and acquaintances of the Franks and reports of their deaths soon started coming in.
Otto understood that the situation was critical and continued trying to emigrate to
the Unites States and Cuba. However, he never managed to obtain the necessary documents.
In January 1942, Edith’s mother Rosa died. It was in the spring of the same year when Otto Frank,
anticipating deportation of his own family, decided to set up a hiding place in an empty
part of his business premises at Prinsengracht 263. If necessary, there would be enough room
for his own family and for the family of his employee Hermann van Pels, seven people in all.
Otto asked four of his closest employees to take care of him and
his family if they would have to go into hiding. And all of them agreed.
Regulations which forced the Jews to wear a yellow badge in the form of a Star of David
as a means of identification were announced in the Netherlands on the 29th of April 1942. Those
who were caught without the badge after the 5th of May of the same year when they came into effect,
were arrested and detained for six-week period. The systematic deportation of Dutch Jews to the
death camps started in the summer of 1942. Transports regularly left the transit camps
of Westerbork and Vught. Out of 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands by the beginning
of the Second World War, 107,000 including little children were deported mostly for
Auschwitz and Sobibor by September, 1944. Only 5,000 of them returned after the war.
Before going into hiding, the 12th of June 1942 was probably the last happy moment for the Frank
family. It was the day when Anne celebrated her 13th birthday and received her diary.
A diary which would one day make her famous and in which she would write
about her thoughts and feelings during the difficult times that were to come.
Less than one month later on the 5th of July 1942, Margot, Anne’s sister,
received a call-up to report for a so-called ‘labor camp’ in Nazi Germany. Knowing the faith of
their friends and acquaintances who had been sent to such camps and never returned, the Franks did
not hesitate for a second. The next morning, they went into hiding in order to escape persecution.
In the Secret Annex, Edith and Otto were to stay with a rebellious Anne and a thoughtful Margot
for 761 long days. After 7 days, the Franks were joined by the Van Pels family made up
of Hermann and Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter from whom Anne would receive her first kiss.
In November, they were joined by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and family friend.
It is Anne’s diary thanks to which we know how the Frank family and 4 other Jews lived
for more than 2 years in a three-story space entered through a revolving bookcase.
The people in hiding were completely dependent on their six helpers – these were Miep
and Jan Gies, Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, and Bep and Johan Voskuijl . [medzera] They were
employees and friends of Otto who provided food, clothing, and everything necessary to the 8 people
in the Secret Annex between 1942 and 1944. Writing helped Anne pass the time and it is
thanks to her diary that we can get a glimpse into the everyday life of the people in hiding.
It was important to be silent especially from 8:30 AM when the men in the warehouse,
which was located below the Secret Annex, started their work day.
Any sound could cause suspicion. Otto continued to be concerned with the ins
and outs of the company and whenever business relations from Frankfurt visited, he would lie
down with his ear to the floor in order to hear what was being discussed in the office below.
The morning was devoted to reading, studying, and preparing for their lunch break.
At 12:30 PM, when the warehouse workers went home for lunch,
a few of the helpers came up to the Secret Annex to have lunch with the people in hiding.
Miep Gies usually stayed in the office to keep an eye on things. The people in hiding could
see other faces and listen to the “Radio Oranje” which was a programme broadcasted by BBC where
the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, who on the 13th of May 1940 had escaped from the invading German troops
and then travelled to England, spoke 34 times. While in the afternoon some people in hiding took
a nap, Anne, who wanted to become a writer and journalist, would study or write in her diary.
Margot, who saw a future for herself as a maternity nurse in Palestine, also had a diary.
Otto loved to read Charles Dickens, with a dictionary in hand.
Then they had a coffee, prepared for dinner and at 5:30 PM, when the warehouse workers went home,
the people in hiding would leave the Secret Annex and spread out through the building.
They would cook dinner and took turns using the bathroom as they did in
the morning before the warehouse workers started their working day.
Otto felt responsible for the atmosphere in the Secret Annex and acted as a mediator in
the countless larger and smaller arguments. The Franks had thought that living with their
partner's family in the Secret Annex would make life less monotonous, but they had not foreseen
how many problems would arise because of the differences in characters and views.
In her diary, Anne wrote: ‘I am dazed by all the abusive exchanges that have
hurtled through this virtuous house during the past month.
Daddy goes about with his lips tightly pursed, when anyone speaks to him,
he looks up startled, as is he is afraid he will have to patch up some tricky relationship again.
Quite honestly, sometimes I forget who we are quarreling with and with whom we've made it up.”
In the hiding place, Edith and Anne often clashed, too. In her diary,
Anne did not spare her mother and would often write about the disagreements, conflicts, mutual
lack of understanding, and her mother’s pessimism from which she wanted to disassociate herself.
As Anne grew wiser, she managed to keep things bearable and wrote in her diary: ‘I usually keep
my mouth shut if I get annoyed, and so does she, so we appear to get on much better together.’
According to Otto, Edith suffered more from their arguments than Anne did.
And even though he was worried about Edith and Anne not having a good relationship,
he never doubted that his wife was an excellent mother, who put her children above all else.
Although she often complained that Anne would oppose everything she did,
Edith was comforted to know that Anne trusted in her father Otto.
Miep Gies, one of the helpers, remembered Otto in the Secret Annex as ‘the calm one,
the children’s teacher, the most logical one,
the one who balanced everyone out. He was the leader, the one in charge.’
Edith, however, had a hard time in the Secret Annex. According to Miep Gies,
she suffered from feelings of despair and although the others were counting the days
until the Allies came, making games of what they would do when it was all over,
Edith confessed that she was deeply ashamed of the fact that she felt the end would never come.
The situation became more dangerous after September 1942, when special units were formed,
made up of Dutch collaborators that began hunting for hiding Jews. An estimated 25,000
Jews went into hiding in the Netherlands. Two thirds of them survived but one third
was betrayed and discovered. To this day, we do not know the reason for the police raid, but the
hiding period for the 8 people in the Secret Annex came to an abrupt end on the 4th of August 1944.
The hiding place had been discovered and its 8 inhabitants were arrested. Two of the helpers
were also arrested. One of them, Victor Kugler, remembered how Margot had been weeping silently
during the arrest. The Dutch police officers, who arrested Otto and the others in hiding, were
headed by an Austrian SS officer Karl Silberbauer. Otto Frank was upstairs giving an English lesson
to Peter van Pels when a Dutch SD man entered Peter’s room pointing a gun. Next everybody
was gathered together. Silberbauer reacted surprised when he spotted Otto’s army footlocker,
realizing one of his prisoners had been a German officer during the First World War
This might explain why the people in hiding were allowed time to pack up a few personal belongings
While Silberbauer confiscated their valuables and money, he scattered out the papers and notebooks.
After the people from the Secret Annex were then taken to Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam, the
two helpers Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl took Anne’s documents before the Secret Annex was emptied by
order of the Nazis. While Anne’s diary and other manuscripts survived, Margot’s diary was lost.
From a prison in Amsterdam, they were sent to the Westerbork transit camp where they
ended up in a prison barracks, and the men and women were separated.
As convicted offenders, Edith and her daughters had to do a dirty and unhealthy work of taking
old batteries apart for reuse. The kind of work that Otto had to perform during
the day is unknown but in the evening he could be with Edith, Margot, and Anne.
On the 3rd of September 1944, the Franks were deported for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration
camp. Their train was the last one to leave Westerbork for this extermination camp located in
Nazi-occupied Poland. When they reached Auschwitz, they did not know that the worst was yet to come.
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