Anne Frank

File:AnneFrankDiaryofaYoungGirl1995.jpg

Cover of the diary's "Definitive Edition", 1995. The photograph used is cropped from a school portrait of Anne Frank taken at the Montessori School in 1941.

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (June 12, 1929–February/March 1945) was a Jewish girl who wrote a diary while in hiding with her family and four friends in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. After two years in hiding, the group was betrayed and they were transported to concentration camps, where all but Anne's father Otto died. He returned to Amsterdam to find that Anne's diary had been saved. Convinced that the diary was a unique record, he took action to have it published.

The diary was given to Anne Frank for her thirteenth birthday and chronicles the events of her life from June 12, 1942 until its final entry of August 4, 1944. It was eventually translated from its original Dutch into many languages and became one of the world's most widely read works. Described as the work of a mature and insightful mind, it provides an intimate examination of daily life under Nazi occupation; through her writing, Frank has become one of the most renowned and discussed of the Holocaust victims.

Life before World War II

Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the second daughter of Otto Heinrich Frank (May 12, 1889–August 19 1980), a World War I veteran who had fought for Germany, and his wife Edith Holländer (January 16, 1900–January 6, 1945). Margot Betti Frank (February 16, 1926–March 1945) was her sister.

The family lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and Aryan citizens. As young children, the Frank girls grew up with Catholic and Protestant children, as well as other Jewish children. The Franks were Reform Jews, observing the traditions of the Jewish faith without observing all its customs. Edith Frank was the more devout parent, while Otto Frank was interested in scholarly pursuits, and had an extensive library. Both parents encouraged the children to read.

On March 13, 1933, elections were held in Frankfurt for the municipal council, with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party winning. Anti-semitic demonstrations occurred almost immediately and the Franks began to fear what would happen to them if they remained in Germany. Later in the year, Edith and the children went to Aachen where they stayed with Edith's mother, Rosa Holländer. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organise the business and to arrange accomodation for his family. His mother, Alice Betty Frank, who was also in fear of the Nazis, moved to Basel in Switzerland, where she joined other relatives in exile.

Otto Frank began working at the "Opekta-Works", a company which sold pectin, a fruit extract used in the making of jams, and found an apartment in a new housing estate on the "Merwedeplein", an Amsterdam suburb. By February 1934, Edith and the children had arrived in Amsterdam, and the children were enrolled in the Montessori school, where Margot demonstrated her abilities with arithmetic, and Anne showed aptitude in reading and writing. They were also recognised as highly distinct personalities, with Margot being well mannered, reserved and studious, while Anne was outspoken, energetic and extroverted.

Yellow stars of the type that all Jews were required to wear during the Nazi occupation.

In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company in partnership with Hermann van Pels, a butcher, who had fled Osnabrück in Germany with his wife Auguste and son Peter. By 1939, the situation for Jews in Germany had worsened, and Edith's mother, Rosa Holländer, came to live with the Franks, remaining with them until her death in January 1942. Margot and Anne were excelling in their studies, and had accumulated a large number of friends, but with the introduction of a decree that Jewish children could only attend Jewish schools, they were enrolled at the Jewish Lyceum.

Diary

For her thirteenth birthday, Anne received a small notebook which she had pointed out to her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an autograph book, bound with red-and-green checkered cloth, and with a small lock on the front, Anne had already decided she would use it as a diary. She began writing in it almost immediately, describing herself and her family, and her daily life at home and at school. Within days, she wrote about the yellow star all Jews were forced to wear in public, and she listed some of the restrictions and persecutions that had encroached into the lives of Amsterdam's Jewish population. In July 1942, Margot Frank received a call-up notice ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp. Anne was then told of a plan that Otto had formulated with the most trusted staff members of his company, and which Edith and Margot had been aware of for a short time. The family was to go into hiding in rooms above and behind the company's premises on the Prinsengracht canal.

The achterhuis

The main façade of the Opekta building on the Prinsengracht canal in 2002. Otto Frank's offices were in the front of the building, with the *achterhuis* in the rear.

On July 8 1942, the family moved into the hiding place. Their apartment was left in a state of disarray to create the impression that they had left suddenly, and Otto Frank left a note that hinted they were going to Switzerland. As Jews were not allowed to use public transport they walked several miles from their home, with each of them wearing several layers of clothing as they did not dare to be seen carrying luggage. The achterhuis (a Dutch word denoting the rear part of a house) was a three-story space at the rear of the building that was entered from a landing above the Opekta offices. Two small rooms, with an adjoining bathroom and toilet, were on the first level, and above that a large open room, with a small room beside it. From this smaller room, a ladder led to the attic. The door to the achterhuis was later covered by a bookcase to ensure it remained undiscovered. Anne would later refer to it in her diary as the "Secret Annexe". The main building was nondescript, old and typical of buildings in the area, on the western side of Amsterdam, a block from the Westerkerk.

Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies and Elisabeth "Bep" Voskuijl were the only employees who knew of the people in hiding, and with Miep Gies' husband Jan Gies and Bep Voskuijl's father, Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl were their "helpers" for the duration of their confinement. They provided the only contact between the outside world and the occupants of the house, and they kept them informed of war news and political developments. They catered for all of their needs, ensured their safety and supplied them with food, a task that grew more difficult with the passage of time. Anne wrote of their dedication and of their efforts to boost morale within the household during the most dangerous of times. All were aware that if caught they could face the death penalty for sheltering Jews.

In late July, the family was joined by the van Pels family, Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter, and then in November by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and friend of the family, who had fled Germany in 1938. Anne wrote of her pleasure at having new people to talk to, but tensions quickly developed within the group forced to live under such confined conditions. After sharing her room with Pfeffer she found him to be insufferable, and she clashed with Auguste van Pels, whom she regarded as foolish. Her relationship with her mother became strained and Anne began to regard her as remote. Although she sometimes argued with Margot, she wrote of an unexpected bond that had developed between them, but she remained closest emotionally to her father. Some time later, after first dismissing the shy and awkward Peter van Pels, she recognised a kinship with him and the two entered a romance.

Anne spent most of her time reading and studying, while continuing to write and edit her diary. In addition to providing a narrative of events as they occurred, she also wrote about her feelings, beliefs and ambitions, subjects that she felt she not discuss with anyone. As her confidence in her writing grew, and as she began to mature, she wrote of more abstract subjects such as her belief in God, and how she defined human nature. She continued writing regularly until her final entry of August 1, 1944.

Arrest and concentration camps

On the morning of August 4, 1944, the achterhuis was stormed by the Grüne Polizei following a tip-off from an informer who was never identified. Led by Schutzstaffel Sergeant Karl Joseph Silberbauer of the Sicherheitsdienst, the group included at least three members of the Security Police. The occupants were given a short time to collect their possessions and were loaded into trucks and taken for interrogation. Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were taken away, and subsequently jailed, but Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were allowed to go. Later they returned to the achterhuis, where they found Anne Frank's papers strewn on the floor. They collected them, as well as several family photograph albums, and Gies resolved not to read them, but to return them to Anne after the war.

After interrogation, the members of the household were taken by train to the camp at Westerbork. Ostensibly a transit camp, by this time more than 100,000 Jews had passed through it, and on September 2, the group was deported, along with more than 1,000 people, on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz. They arrived after a three day journey, and were seperated by gender, with the men and women never to see each other again. Of the 1019 passengers, 549 people, including all children under the age of 15 years, were selected and sent directly to the gas chambers where they were killed. Anne had turned 15 three months earlier and was spared, and although everyone from the achterhuis survived this selection, Anne believed her father had been killed.

Gravestone placed for Anne and Margot Frank at former Bergen-Belsen site, along with memorial tributes.

With the other females not selected for immediate death, Anne was forced to strip naked to be disinfected, had her head shaved and was tattooed with an identifying number on her arm. By day the women were used as slave labor, and by night were crowded into freezing barracks. Disease was rampant and before long Anne's skin became badly infected by scabies.

On October 28, selections began for women to be relocated to Bergen-Belsen. More than 8,000 women, including Anne and Margot Frank, and Auguste van Pels, were transported, but Edith Frank was left behind. Tents were erected to accomodate the influx of prisoners, Anne and Margot among them, and as the population of the camp grew, the death toll due to disease grew rapidly. Anne was briefly reunited with two school friends, who both survived the war, and described her as bald, emaciated and infested with lice. She told them she was caring for Margot who was very ill, and that they were alone, as both of their parents were dead.

In March 1945, a typhus epidemic spread through the camp killing an estimated 17,000 prisoners. Witnesses later testified that Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock, and that a few days later Anne also died. They estimated that this occurred a few weeks before the camp was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945, and although the exact dates were not recorded, it is generally accepted to have been between the end of February and the middle of March.

Publication of the diary

Otto Frank survived and returned to Amsterdam. During his travels, he was informed that his wife had died, but he also learnt that his daughters had been transferred to Bergen-Belsen, and he remained hopeful that they had survived. In July 1945, the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of Anne and Margot and only then did Miep Gies give him the diary. He read it, and later commented that he had not realised Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time together. Moved by her repeated wish to be an author, he began to consider having it published. In an interview later in his life, when asked to recall his first reaction, he said simply, "I never knew my little Anne was so deep".

When Anne Frank started writing her diary, she wrote only for herself, and said that she would never allow anyone else to read it. She candidly described her life, her family and companions, and their situation. In the spring of 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by Gerrit Bolkestein—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. He mentioned the publication of letters and diaries, and Anne decided to submit her work when the time came. She began editing her writing, removing sections, and rewriting others, with the view to publication. Her original notebook, long since filled, was supplemented by additional notebooks and looseleaf sheets of paper. She created pseudonyms for the members of the household and the helpers. The van Pels family became Hermann, Petronella, and Peter van Daan, and Fritz Pfeffer became Albert Düssell. Her original diary, known as "version A", and her edited version, known as "version B", were the basis for the diary edited by Otto Frank. From these sources he developed the first version for publication. He removed certain passages, most notably those which referred to his wife in unflattering terms, and sections that discussed Anne's growing sexuality. Although he restored the true identities of his own family, he retained all of the other pseudonyms.

He gave the diary to the historian Anne Romein, who tried unsuccessfully to have it published. She then gave it to her husband Jan Romein, who wrote an article about it, titled "Kinderstem", ("A Child's Voice"), published in the newspaper Het Parool, on April 3, 1946. He wrote that the diary "stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of facism, more so than all the evidence at Nuremberg put together". [1] His article attracted attention from publishers, and the diary was published in 1947, followed by a second run in 1950. The first American edition was published in 1952 under the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. A play based upon the diary, by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, premiered in New York City on October 5, 1955, and later won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was followed by the 1959 movie The Diary of Anne Frank, which was a critical and commercial success. Over the years the popularity of the diary grew, and in many schools, particularly in the United States, it was included as part of the curriculum, introducing Frank to new generations of readers.

In 2003, a critical edition of the diary was published. It compared her original entries with her father's edited versions, and included discussion relating its authentication, and historical information relating to the family.

The legacy of Anne Frank

Statue of Anne Frank outside the Westerkerk in Amsterdam.

On May 3, 1957 a group of citizens including Otto Frank, established the Anne Frank Foundation in an effort to save the Prinsengracht building from demolition and to make it accessible to the public. Frank also insisted that the aim of the foundation would be to foster contact and communication between young people of different cultures, and of different racial or religious backgrounds, and to oppose intolerance and racial discrimination.

The Anne Frank House opened on May 3, 1960. It consists of the Opekta warehouse and offices, and the Secret Annexe, all unfurnished, so that visitors can walk freely through the rooms. Some personal relics of the former occupants remain, such as movie star photographs, glued by Anne to a wall, a section of wallpaper where Otto Frank marked the height of his growing daughters, and a map on the wall where he recorded the advance of the Allied Forces, all now protected behind perspex sheets. From the small room which was once home to Peter van Pels, a walkway connects the building to its neighbors, also purchased by the Foundation. These other buildings are used to house the diary, as well as changing exhibits that chronicle different aspects of the Holocaust and more contemporary examinations of racial intolerance in various parts of the world, through audio-visual and multimedia displays. It has become one of Amsterdam's main tourist attractions, and is visited by more than half a million people each year.

In 1963, Otto and his second wife Fritzi set up the Anne Frank Fonds as a charitable foundation, based in Basel, Switzerland. The Fonds raises money to donate to causes "as it sees fit". Upon his death, Otto willed the diary's copyright to the Fonds, on the proviso that the first 80,000 francs in income each year was to be distributed to his heirs, and any income above this figure was to be retained by the Fonds to use for whatever projects its administrators considered worthy. Under Swiss law, the Fonds is not required to make public any information concerning its beneficiaries, or how much money it either earns or bequeaths. After considerable criticism in 1997 over its announcement that it had distributed 270,000 francs to "good causes", it doubled its bequests in 1998.

The original diary, including letters and loose sheets, were willed to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation.

Criticism and authentication of the diary

Reconstruction of the bookcase that covered the entrance to the hiding place, in the Anne-Frank-House in Amsterdam.

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". The Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg later said of her: "one voice speaks for six million - the voice not of a sage or a poet but of an ordinary little girl". [2] As Anne Frank's stature as both a writer and humanist has grown, she has been discussed specifically as a symbol of the Holocaust and more broadly as a representative of persecution. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her acceptance speech for an Elie Wiesel Humanitarian Award in 1994, read from Frank's diary and spoke of her "awakening us to the folly of indifference and the terrible toll it takes on our young", which Clinton related to contemporary events in Sarajevo, Somalia and Rwanda. [3]. After winning a humanitarian award from the Anne Frank Foundation in 1994, Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd in Johannesburg, saying he had read Frank's diary while in prison and "derived much encouragement from it". He likened her struggle against nazism to his struggle against apartheid, drawing a parallel between the two philosophies with the comment "because these beliefs are patently false, and because they were, and will always be, challenged by the likes of Anne Frank, they are bound to fail". [4]

The diary has also been praised for its literary merits. Commenting on Frank's writing style, the dramatist Meyer Levin, who worked with Otto Frank on a dramatisation of the diary shortly after its publication,[5] praised it for "sustaining the tension of a well-constructed novel",[6] while the poet John Berryman wrote that it was a unique depiction, not merely of adolescence, but of "the mysterious, fundamental process of a child becoming an adult as it is actually happening". [7] Frank's biographer, Melissa Müller said that she wrote "in a precise, confident, economical style stunning in its honesty". Her writing is largely a study of characters, and she examines every person in her circle with a shrewd, uncompromising eye. She is occasionally cruel and often biased, particularly in her depiction of Fritz Pfeffer, and of her own mother, and Müller explains that she channelled the "normal mood swings of adolescence" into her writing. Her examination of herself and her surroundings is sustained over a lengthy period of time in an introspective, analytical and highly self critical manner, and in moments of frustration she relates the battle being fought within herself between the "good Anne" she wants to be, and the "bad Anne" she believes herself to be. Otto Frank recalled his publisher explaining why he thought the diary has been so widely read, saying "he said that the diary encompasses so many areas of life that each reader can find something that moves him personally".

Since its publication, efforts have been made to discredit the diary, with the most consistent criticism being that the writing displays a level of sensitivity and self awareness beyond the grasp of so young a writer. As early as 1959 a lawsuit was mounted in Lübeck against two men who had written that the diary was a forgery, with both men being found guilty. The Holocaust denier David Irving has stated that he accepts the diary in its original form is "the work of a pubescent Jewish girl", but does not accept it as "authentic". He says that it was edited by "her father... or other persons unknown", with the intended result that "the Anne Frank Foundation became rich", but as a historical document the diary is "completely worthless by virtue of having been tampered with."[8]

The controversy reached its peak in 1980 with the arrest and trial of two neo-nazis, Ernst Romer and Edgar Gaiss, who were tried and found guilty of denouncing the diary as a forgery. During their appeal, a team of historians examined the documents in consultation with Otto Frank, and determined them to be genuine. In 1986 the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation commissioned a forensic study of the diary through the Netherlands Ministry of Justice. They examined the handwriting against known exemplars and found that they matched, and determined that the paper, glue and ink were readily available during the time the diary was said to have been written. Their final determination was that the diary is authentic. On March 23, 1990, the Hamburg Regional Court confirmed its authenticity.

Fate of family and friends

After the war, it was estimated that of approximately 111,000 Jews deported from The Netherlands, only 5,000 had survived.

Other occupants of the achterhuis:

Edith Frank: died January 6, 1945, in Auschwitz-Birkenau from starvation.
Fritz Pfeffer: died December 20, 1944, in Neuengamme.
Hermann van Pels: died September 6, 1944, in Auschwitz. He was the only member of the group to be gassed. This occurred about three weeks after arriving at Auschwitz and his selection was witnessed by Otto Frank and Peter van Pels.
Auguste van Pels: Both her date and place of death are unknown but witnesses testified she was with the Frank sisters during part of their time in Bergen-Belsen, but that she was not present when they died in February/March. She is therefore believed to have been transferred before March 1945, to Buchenwald, then to Theresienstadt, where she is believed to have died.
Peter van Pels: died May 5, 1945, in Mauthausen during a death march. Otto Frank had protected him during their period of imprisonment together, as the two men had been assigned to the same work group. Frank later stated that he had urged Peter to hide in Auschwitz and remain behind with him, rather than set out on the forced march. Peter decided that he would have a better chance of survival if he joined the march. His death at the age of eighteen occurred three days before the liberation of Mathausen.
Otto Frank remained in Auschwitz with other sick prisoners and survived. In 1953 he married Elfrida 'Fritzi' Markovits Geiringer, an Auschwitz survivor who had lost her husband and son in Auschwitz, and whose daughter, also a survivor, had been acquainted with the Frank sisters. Otto Frank died in Birsfelden, Switzerland from natural causes, August 19, 1980. His widow 'Fritzi' continued his work until her death in October, 1998.

The helpers:

Miep Gies saved Anne Frank's diary without reading it. She later said that if she had read it, she would have needed to destroy it, as it contained a great deal of incriminating information. She and her husband Jan took Otto Frank into their home where he lived from 1945 until 1952. In 1994 she received the "Order of Merit" of the Federal Republic of Germany, and in 1995 received the highest honor from the Yad Vashem, the Righteous Among the Nations. She was appointed a "Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau" by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. In 1996 she shared an Academy Award with Jon Blair for their documentary Anne Frank Remembered. Born in 1909, Miep Gies as of 2005 resides alone in her apartment in Amsterdam.
Jan Gies, husband of Miep, died January 26, 1993 in Amsterdam.
Johannes Kleiman spent seven weeks in a work camp after his arrest, and was released after intervention from the Red Cross. He returned to Opekta, and took over the firm when Otto Frank moved to Basel in 1952. He died in 1959 at his office desk, at the age of sixty-three.
Victor Gustav Kuglar spent seven months in various work camps, and escaped in March, 1945 when the camp was attacked by British troops. He remained in hiding in his hometown of Hilversum until liberated by Canadian troops. He migrated to Canada in 1955 and lived in Toronto. He received the "Medal of the Righteous" from Yad Vashem Memorial, with a tree planted in his honour on the Boulevard of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1973. He died December 16, 1981 in Toronto, after a long illness, at the age of eighty-one.
Elisabeth 'Bep' Voskuijl left Opetka shortly after the war and married in 1946. She died in Amsterdam on May 6, 1983.
Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl (father of Bep) whose ill health was often mentioned in Anne's diary, died of cancer, in late November, 1945.

Friends and extended family:

Susanne "Sanne" Ledermann was Anne's constant companion from the time of her arrival in Amsterdam, and is mentioned several times at the beginning of the diary. After his return to Amsterdam Otto Frank determined to investigate the fates of his daughters' friends. He learnt that Sanne, her sister Barbara, and their parents Franz and Ilse were arrested on June 20, 1943. Barbara Ledermann, who was a friend of Margot, pretended to be Aryan and a young soldier allowed her to leave. She survived the war. Sanne and her parents were sent first to Westerbork, then on November 16 to Auschwitz, where all three were gassed upon arrival. Another friend mentioned in the diary, Ilse Wagner was the first of Anne's circle of friends to be deported. She was deported, along with her mother, and grandmother, to Sobibór extermination camp, where they were all gassed upon arrival on April 2, 1943.
Charlotte Kaletta, the common law wife of Fritz Pfeffer was not Jewish and therefore was able to remain in her Amsterdam apartment during the occupation. She lost her Jewish husband, and their son in Auschwitz, but held hope that Pfeffer had survived. When she learnt of his death, she married him posthumously. Otto Frank was sympathetic to her, and offered her assistance, however in the 1950s she severed all contact with him, and with Miep and Jan Gies, because she was offended by the unflattering depiction of Pfeffer in Anne's diary. She died in Amsterdam, June 13, 1985.
Several members of the Frank and Holländer families, including Otto's mother and brothers and Edith's sister and two brothers fled from Germany to Switzerland in the 1930s, and all who did so, survived the war. In his later years, Otto Frank lamented his decision to take his family to the Netherlands.

References

Clinton, Hillary Rodham (April 14, 1994). "Remarks by the First Lady, Elie Wiesel Humanitarian Awards, New York City". Speech.
Edward, Silvia (undated). "Anne Frank (Annelies Marie Frank)". Retrieved January 30, 2005.
Frank, Anne; Massotty, Susan (translation); Frank, Otto H. & Pressler, Mirjam (editors) (1995). The Diary of a Young Girl - The Definitive Edition. Doubleday. ISBN 0553296981
Irving, David (1988). The 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel -- 1988. Institute for Historical Review. Retrieved January 30, 2005.
Lee, Carol Ann (2000). The Biography of Anne Frank - Roses from the Earth. Viking. ISBN 0708991742.
Michaelsen, Jacob B. (1997). "Remembering Anne Frank". findarticle.com. Retrieved January 30, 2005.
Müller, Melissa; Kimber, Rita & Kimber, Robert (translators); With a note from Miep Gies (2000). Anne Frank - The Biography. Metropolitan books. ISBN 0747545235.
Mandela, Nelson (August 15, 1994). Address by President Nelson Mandela at the Johannesburg opening of the Anne Frank exhibition at the Museum Africa. Speech.
Romein, Jan (April 3, 1946). Facsimile of newpaper Het Parool, first article published about the diary. Retrieved January 30, 2005
van der Rol, Ruud; Verhoeven, Rian (for the Anne Frank House); Quindlen, Anna (Introduction); Langham, Tony & Peters, Plym (translation) (1995). Anne Frank - Beyond the Diary - A Photographic Remembrance. Puffin. ISBN 0140369260.

External links