ANNE FRANK

A BREIF HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST MOST FAMOUS VICTIM

PART 1:

I decided to do my essay on Anne frank because in 4^th class my teacher did a brief history on her and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed reading the diary in school that I even read on ahead at home without the teacher asking me to. I also bought the book myself. As I got older and moved up in school I began to learn more about World War II and Anne Frank and it all got more and more interesting. Another reason I decided to do Anne Frank is to try and find out how they got found. Also to find out what life was like in for her and her family in hiding.

The aims of my essay were:

1- To find out about the early life of Anne Frank.

2- To carry out a brief history of the rise of the Nazi and the development of their anti Jewish policy.

3- To look at how the family ended up in hiding.

4- To carry out a brief history of the family’s life in hiding.

5- To briefly look at the history of the family after hiding.

I’m doing the senior cycle in school. Our history teacher told us about the history essay for the Leaving Certificate. He sent u off to pick a topic. I came back with Anne Fran. My teacher said it was a great topic to do and to do research on the topic (Anne Frank). He also said it as a good topic because she was the Holocaust most famous victim. He also said to do some research on her and her family after the war. He told me to go to the local library and get a few books out on her. I also went on the internet to find website. I got one book out of the library called searching for Anne Frank.

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany on 12^th June 1929. Her real name was Annelies Marie. Her father sometimes called her “Annelein” meaning little Anne[1] “ On the web page it says, her given name was Annelies Marie, but her friends and family called Anne her father sometimes called her Annelein (little Anne)”. She was Jewish and lived in Germany for four years and then her family moved to Amsterdam after the Nazis came to power in Germany.

Anne Frank lived with her family which consisted of her older sister Margot who was three years older then Anne, her mother and father were Edith Hollander and Otto Heinrich Frank. They lived in a small community of Jewish and non Jewish people where children grew up together as friends no matter what religion they were. Her mother was a devoted parent while her father was a decorated German officer from World War I. Both parents encouraged the children to read.

Following the Nazi takeover of Germany in January 1933, the Franks immigrated to Amsterdam, Holland, where Otto Frank became the managing director of a food company with a warehouse and office on the Prinsengracht, one of the city's canal/streets. Anne attended the Montessori school in Amsterdam. When the Nazis occupied Holland in May 1940 they began to institute anti-Jewish regulations which forced Anne to leave her school and to go to a Jewish secondary school. Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star to represent the Jewish Star of David [2] “ it says on this website that Jews were forced to wear the yellow Jewish star of David” and moving of Jews from Holland to the Auschwitz extermination camp commenced.

He moved there to organise the business and find a place for him and his family to stay. He began working at Opekta Works. He stayed in an apartment on the Merwedeplein in Amsterdam. In February 1934 Edith and the children moved over. Anne and her sister were enrolled in school, Anne in a Montessori school and Margot in a public school. Margot showed ability in maths and Anne in reading and writing. Anne’s friend Hannah Goslar later recalled that Anne always wrote while covering her it with her hands and she would never talk about it with anyone. These writings have never been found. Anne was an outspoken, energetic, and extroverted type of person. Margot was well mannered, reserved and a good student.

In 1938, Anne’s father set up a second company with Hermann van Pels, a Jewish butcher, who left Osnabrück in Germany with his family. In 1939, Anne’s grandmother came to live with them, and lived with them until she died in January 1942. In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by passing restrictive and discriminatory laws. They were forced to register and segregation soon followed. Anne and Margot were doing better in their school work and had loads of friends, but with the introduction of a law that Jewish children could attend only Jewish schools, they were moved to the Jewish Lyceum[3] “ on this website it says Margot and Anne were excelling in their studies and had many friends, but with the introduction of a decree that Jewish children could attend only Jewish schools, they were enrolled at the Jewish Lyceum.”.

It was Anne’s birthday, and her father got her a little diary Anne had said she liked. She liked it so much she started writing in it straight away[4] She says in the diary “writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.”. At first she was writing about herself what she liked and didn’t like. Then it got more serious and she started talking about her feeling’s towards the Nazis. Then when her grandmother died she talked about how she felt. The diary became like a beast friend to her.

On July 1942, Margot got a phone call notice from the Central Office for Jewish Emigration telling her to move to a work camp. Anne’s father told her that the family would go into hiding in rooms above and behind the company's premises on the Prinsengracht, a street along one of Amsterdam's canals, where some of her father’s most trusted employees would help them. The phone call forced them to move a few weeks earlier than planned.

On Monday morning, 6^th July 1942, the family moved into hiding. Their apartment was left like normal so that it looked as if they had left in a hurry, and her father left a letter hinting they were going to Switzerland. The need for secrecy forced them to leave behind Anne's cat, Moortje. Since Jews were not allowed to use public transport, they walked many kilometers from their home. Each of them wore several layers of clothes so they weren’t seen with bags.[5] “As she says in her diary, the four off us were wrapped in so many lsyers of clothes it looked as if we were going off to spend the night in a refrigerator, and all that just so we could take more clothes with us.” The secret Annex was a three-story space entered from a landing above the Opekta offices. It had two small rooms, with a bathroom and toilet, on the first level and above that a larger open room, with a small room beside it. From this smaller room, a ladder led to the attic. The door to the Annex was later covered by a bookcase to hide it.

Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl were the only people who knew that the Frank family was in hiding. Gies' husband Jan Gies and Voskuijl's father Johannes Hendrik. Voskuijl, were their "helpers" for the time they were in hiding[6] “as in her diary she says, mr kleeiman and miep and bep voskuijl too, have helped us so much”. They provided the only contact between the outside world and the people of the house, and they kept them informed of the news in the course of war and politics. They catered for all of their needs, ensured their safety and supplied them with food, a task that grew harder and harder to do as time went on. Anne wrote about their dedication and efforts to boost morale within the household during the most dangerous of times. They all knew that if caught they could be killed[7] “on this website it says, all were aware that if caught they could face the death penalty for sheltering Jews.

Later in the summer, the Franks were joined by the van Pels family, and then in Nov Fritz Pfeffer, a friend of the family who was a dentist. Ann was happy to see more people but tensions began with everybody living so close together[8] “on this website it says Anne wrote of her pleasure at having new people to talk to but tensions quickly developed within the group forced to live in such confined conditions”. After sharing a room with Pfeffer, she though he was irritating, and she also didn’t get along with Auguste van Pels, who she believed, was stupid. She said Hermann van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer were selfish, especially over food they ate. A while later, after first ignoring the shy and awkward Peter van Pels, she found a friendship with him and the two got together. She had her first kiss with him, but her crush on him began to fade as she questioned whether her feelings for him were real, or because they were stuck there. She formed a close bond with each of the helpers and her father later recalled that she couldn’t wait for the daily visits. He observed that Anne's closest friendship was with Bep Voskuijl, "the young typist... the two of them often stood whispering in the corner".

In her writing, she talked about her relationships with her family, and the strong differences in their personalities. She thought of herself as closest to her father, who later commented, "I got on better with Anne than with Margot, who was closer to her mother. The reason for that was because Margot rarely showed her feelings and didn't need as much comfort because she didn't suffer from mood swings as much as Anne. Anne and Margot got closer while in hiding. In Anne’s writing she showed jealousy of Margot’s soft and easy going personality. As Anne began to mature, they were able to talk to each other a lot easier.

12^th January 1944, Anne wrote, "Margot's much nicer.... She's not nearly so unpleasant these days and is becoming a real friend. She no longer thinks of me as a little baby who doesn't count".

Anne wrote about her difficult relationship with her mother, and of her ambivalence towards her. On 7 November 1942 she described her "contempt" for her mother and her inability to "confront her with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hard-heartedness", before concluding, "She's not a mother to me". Later, as she revised her diary, Anne felt ashamed of her harsh attitude, writing "Anne is it really you who mentioned hate, oh Anne, how could you?" She came to understand that their differences resulted from misunderstandings that were as much her fault as her mother's, and saw that she had added unnecessarily to her mother's suffering. With this realization, Anne began to treat her mother with a degree of tolerance and respect.

Margot and Anne each hoped to return to school as soon as they were able and continued with their studies. Margot took a short hand course by correspondence in Bep Voskuijl's name and received high marks. She also kept a diary, however it is believed to be lost. Most of Anne's time was spent reading and studying, and she regularly wrote and edited her diary writings. In addition to providing a narrative of events as they occurred, she wrote about her feelings, beliefs and ambitions, subjects she felt she could 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 1^st August 1944.

On 4^th August, 1944, the Achterhuis was broke into by the German Security Police though an informer who was never identified. Led by Schutzstaffel Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer of the Sicherheitsdienst, the group included at least three members of the Security Police. The Franks, van Pelses and Pfeffer were taken to the Gestapo headquarters where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5^th August they were moved to the Huis van Bewaring (House of Detention), an overcrowded prison on the Weteringschans. Two days later they were moved to Westerbork. It was a transit camp, by this time more than 100,000 Jews had passed through it. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and were sent to the Punishment Barracks for hard labor.

Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested and jailed at the penal camp for enemies of the regime at Amersfoort. Kleiman was released after seven weeks, but Kugler was held in different work camps until the war ended. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were questioned and threatened by the Security Police but were not detained. They returned to the Achterhuis the following day, and found Anne's papers thrown on the floor. They picked them up, as well as several family photo albums, and Gies decided to return them to Anne after the war. On 7^th August, 1944, Gies attempted to help release the prisoners by confronting Silberbauer and offering him money to intervene, but he refused.

On 3^rd September, the group was deported on what would be the last move from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp, they arrived after three day’s traveling. In the chaos that marked the unloading of the trains, the men were forced away from the women and children, and Anne’s father was taken from his family. Of the 1019 passengers, 549—including all children younger than fifteen—were sent directly to the gas chambers. Anne had turned fifteen three months earlier and was one of the youngest people to be spared from her move. She was soon made aware that most people were gassed at arrival, and never learnt that the entire group from the Achterhuis had survived this selection. She reasoned that her father, in his mid fifties and not particularly robust, had been killed immediately after they were separated.

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. Everyday, the women were used as slaves and Anne was forced to haul rocks and dig rolls of sod; at night, they were crammed into overcrowded barracks. Witnesses later testified that Anne became withdrawn and tearful when she saw children being led to the gas chambers, though other witnesses reported that more often she displayed strength and courage, and that her confident nature allowed her to obtain extra bread rations for Edith, Margot and herself. Disease was rampant and before long, Anne's skin became badly infected by scabies. She and Margot were moved into an infirmary, which was always dark, and infested with rats and mice. Her mother stopped eating, saving every morsel of food for her daughters and passing her rations to them, through a hole she made at the bottom of the infirmary wall.

On 28^th October, 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 her mother was left behind and later died from starvation. Tents were erected at Bergen-Belsen to accommodate the influx of prisoners, and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased rapidly. Anne was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar and Nanette Blitz, who were in another section of the camp. Goslar and Blitz both survived the war and later talked about the brief conversations that they had with Anne through a fence. Blitz described her as bald, emaciated and shivering and Goslar noted that Auguste van Pels was with Anne and Margot Frank, and was caring for Margot who was severely ill. Neither of them saw Margot as she was too weak to leave her bunk. Anne told both Blitz and Goslar that she believed her parents were dead, and for that reason did not wish to live any longer. Goslar later estimated that their meetings were in late January or early February, 1945.

In March 1945, a typhus epidemic spread through the camp and killed at least 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 died. They said that this occurred a few weeks before the camp was liberated by British troops on 15^th April, 1945, although the exact dates were not recorded. After liberation, the camp was burned in an effort to prevent further spread of disease, and Anne and Margot were buried in a mass grave, exactly where is not know.

After the war, it was said that of the 107,000 Jews moved from the Netherlands between 1942 and 1944, only 5,000 survived. It was also said that up to 30,000 Jews stayed in The Netherlands, with many people aided by the Dutch underground. Approximately two-thirds of these people survived the war.

Anne’s father survived his internment in Auschwitz and after the war ended he returned to Amsterdam where he was sheltered by Jan and Miep Gies, as he attempted to locate his family. He learnt of the death of his wife, Edith, in Auschwitz, but he remained hopeful that his daughters had survived. After several weeks, he discovered that Margot and Anne had also died. He attempted to determine the fates of his daughters' friends, and learnt that many had been murdered. Susanne Ledermann, often mentioned in Anne's diary, had been gassed along with her parents, though her sister, Barbara, a close friend of Margot, had survived. Several of the Frank sisters' school friends had survived, as had the extended families of both Otto and Edith Frank, as they had fled Germany during the mid 1930s, with individual family members settling in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States

[4] Anne Frank The Diary Of a Young Girl page 12

[5] Anne Frank The Diary Of a Young Girl page 32

[6] Anne Frank The Diary Of a Young Girl page 39