Frank, Anne (1929–1945)

Dutch girl, one of the millions of Jews killed by the Germans, who became a symbol of brutalized innocence through the power of her diary. Born Anneliese Marie Frank on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; died of typhus in the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945; daughter of Otto Frank and Edith Frank-Hollander; sister of Margot Betti Frank.

"The diary of Anne Frank has taken on a kind of mystical quality…," wrote Anna Quindlen in 1993. "I read the dairy first when I was twelve, reread it just last week.… Its power is so enormous that, looking at the pictures of the actual diary, with its plaid cover and impotent little lock, a shiver took hold of me as though the thing was a relic, as indeed it is."

Anneliese Marie Frank was born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt am Main. Long before others were prepared to act, Otto and Edith Frank were leery of the growing anti-Semitism in Germany. In 1933, they moved from Frankfurt to Amsterdam, Holland, in the Netherlands, where their daughters—four-year-old Anne and six-year-old Margot Frank —could lead a normal existence. There, Anne would attend the Sixth Public Montessori School (now named the Anne Frank School) for six years.

Otto Frank managed Opekta, the Dutch division of a company that produced pectin for the preparation of jam. As the firm grew, it moved to a building facing the Prinsengracht, one of the many canals that wind through old Amsterdam. Prinsengracht 263 was a five-story, narrow, red-brick building which, shoulder to shoulder, shared the street with other small factories or businesses. Among his employees were two woman: Miep Gies and a young typist, Bep Voskuijl.

On Friday, May 10, 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. Two days later, Queen Wilhelmina and her family fled to England, and the nation's surrender came within a week. Holland was now a part of the Third Reich, commanded by Arthur Seyss-Inquart. At first, the Germans tried to woo the Dutch with their civility, but the theaters showed only German movies, the radio played only German music, and the newspapers contained only German news. At Otto Frank's factory, life went on as usual. Each day, the bells from the church down the block rang out on the quarter hour while seagulls bobbed on the canal. But Hollanders made a mental list of all their Dutch acquaintances: those with Nazi sympathies, known as NSBers, would prove to be dangerous.

The changes in Amsterdam were gradual. In August 1940, Dutch Jews were told to register. That September, Jews in the Civil Service—teachers, professors, mail deliverers—lost their jobs. The Old Jewish Quarter was sealed off. Opekta was ordered to register as a business having one or more Jewish partners. When 400 Jews were trucked off in a punitive move and met with accidental death, the Dutch called a general strike of docks, transportation, and industry for February 25, 1941; it lasted for three days. There were brutal reprisals from the Nazis.

Jews were now forbidden accommodation in hotels and restaurants, and could no longer attend movies, frequent public parks, or ride streetcars. Jews could shop only between the hours of three and five and only in Jewish stores. Jews had to turn in their radios. With their assets frozen, Jews could no longer use their bank deposits or valuables. Yanked out of public and private schools, Jewish children were told to attend all Jewish schools with all Jewish teachers. Thus, in September 1941, Anne and Margot Frank were transferred to the Jewish Lyceum (secondary school). Anne's schoolfriend Jacqueline van Maarsen confided: "I don't dare do anything anymore, 'cause I'm afraid it's not allowed." Then came the yellow star; it was now a crime for a Christian to mix with a Jew. The Germans had successfully separated the Dutch Jews from their neighbors.

Frank, Margot (1926–1945)

Sister of Anne Frank. Born Margot Betti Frank in February 1926 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; died of typhus in the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945; daughter of Otto Frank and Edith Frank-Hollander; sister of Anne Frank.

An excellent student and unfailingly polite, Margot Frank was pretty, bookish, and much more introspective than her sociable younger sister Anne.

Voskuijl, Bep (d. 1983)

Young typist who helped the Franks. Name variations: Elli Vossen in the original diary. Born Elisabeth Voskuijl; died in 1983.

Aware that his position as managing director was threatening the company, Otto Frank announced that, though he would run the business as usual, he would legally resign and transfer the corporate papers to a partner. In the meantime, he was secretly filling a hiding place with necessities for living: canned goods, soap, linens, sacks of dried beans, furnishings, and cooking utensils. The ground floor of the Opekta company faced the canal; the first floor contained the offices, a kitchen, and a small storeroom; the second floor was used for warehousing; the third floor was an attic. Toward the back of the second floor, down a small corridor, there was an annex. Containing five small rooms, the annex was a separate section in the rear of the building that butted against the

second and third floor. Though Margot and Anne were unsuspecting, their parents had been preparing for their disappearance into this annex for more than a year.

As the Nazis tightened their grip, Otto called Miep Gies into his office and told her he was taking his family into hiding. Since only a few walls would separate the Frank family from Miep's work station, he wanted to know if she objected. She said she did not. He then asked if she would be willing to assume the responsibility of their care. When she replied that she would, Otto reminded her of the punishment for those who helped Jews, but Gies cut him off. "I said, 'of course.' I meant it." They did not discuss details.

On June 12, 1942, for her 13th birthday, Anne Frank received a diary, a stiff-backed notebook with a red-plaid cover. "I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone," she wrote that first day, "and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support." She longed to be a writer and, despite the fact that no one would be "interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl," she had an even greater need to get things off her chest since "paper has more patience than people." Though Anne hastened to point out that she had many friends, including Hannah Goslar, she would make her diary her one good friend. She would call it Kitty.

Three weeks later, on the first Sunday in July 1942, 16-year-old Margot received a postcard, summoning her to report to a work camp in the East, a euphemism for German forced labor. That night, Miep and her husband Jan made several trips to the Frank house and spirited out goods that they would smuggle into the hiding place at a later date. The following morning, on July 6, thankful for the pouring rain, the family—minus Anne's mourned-for cat Moortje—moved into the "Secret Annex" behind the business. By planting clues, they fostered the rumor that they had escaped to Otto's mother's home in Basel, Switzerland. A week later, the Franks were joined by the van Pelses (known as the van Daans in the diary). The agreeable Hermann van Pels worked with Otto Frank, over-seeing the new spices division; he was accompanied by his wife Auguste van Pels, their son, 16-year-old Peter, and Peter's cat Mouschi. Wrote Anne:

No one would ever suspect there were so many rooms behind that plain gray door. There's just one small step in front of the door, and then you're inside. Straight ahead of you is a steep flight of stairs. To the left is a narrow hallway opening onto a room that serves as the Frank family's living room and bedroom. Next door is a smaller room, the bedroom and study of the two young ladies of the family. To the right of the stairs is a windowless washroom with a sink.… If you go up the stairs and open the door at the top, you're surprised to see such a large, light and spacious room in an old canal-side house like this. It contains a stove … and a sink. This will be the kitchen and bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. van [Pels], as well as the general living room, dining room and study for us all. A tiny side room is to be Peter van [Pel]'s bedroom. Then, just as in the front part of the building, there's an attic and loft.

Eventually, the group added a hinged bookcase in front of the Annex door that would swing out to open, sealing off the rooms and the stairs from view.

From the moment the workers arrived downstairs in the morning to the time they left, there was no noise from the tiny, three-floor Annex: no toilet flushed, no floorboard creaked. Miep would climb the stairs for the day's shopping list, then, using forged ration cards obtained from the underground, return with the groceries in the afternoon and stay for a visit. Once a week, she and Jan Gies would deliver a stack of books from a lending library. Otto Frank's business partners would also visit.

The two families made the Annex as liveable as possible. Anne, who initially shared a tiny first-floor bedroom with Margot, covered the wall with magazine photos: Ray Milland, Greta Garbo , Norma Shearer , Dutch actress Lily Bouwmeester , England's then Princess Elizabeth (II) , and Michelangelo's Pietà. Anne loved movies and was adept at mimicking voices; she also loved being the center of attention and was once dubbed a chatterbox by her teacher. With her deep set, gray-green eyes and keen intelligence, she had been popular at school. "Five admirers on every street corner," she wrote, "twenty or so friends, the favorite of most of my teachers, spoiled rotten by Father and Mother, bags full of candy and a big allowance. What more could anyone ask for?"

Goslar, Hannah (1928—)

Childhood schoolmate of Anne Frank, known as Lies Goosens in the original diary. Name variations: Hannah Pick-Goslar; Hanneli Goslar; Lies Goslar; Lies Goosens in the original diary. Born Hannah Elisabeth Goslar in Berlin, Germany, in 1928; daughter of Hans Goslar (before moving to the Netherlands, was deputy minister for domestic affairs and press secretary of the Prussian Cabinet in Berlin) and Ruth Judith Klee (a teacher); married; children: three, including son Chagi (an officer in the Israeli army).

Born in Berlin in 1928, Hannah Goslar was the daughter of Ruth Klee Goslar , a teacher, and Hans Goslar, who was deputy minister for domestic affairs and press secretary of the Prussian Cabinet in Berlin before moving to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1933. The Goslars lived diagonally across from the Franks, and Anne and Hannah were very close. One day Hannah arrived at the Franks' door to borrow a scale and was told they had moved to Switzerland.

As reported in Anne's diary, in October 1942 Hannah's mother died in childbirth. On November 27, 1943, Anne wrote that she dreamed that Hannah was dead. In reality, Hannah, her sister, and her father were part of a large Nazi roundup on June 20, 1943. On February 15, 1944, they were transported from Westerbork to Bergen-Belsen. A year later, Auguste van Pels fetched Hannah and told her that Anne was in the same camp in a section composed of large tents. The friends met and talked through the barbed wire. Unaware that Otto Frank was still alive, Anne was tearful and told Hannah that her parents were both dead. After the war, with the help of Otto Frank, Hannah Goslar moved to Israel.

Pels, Auguste van (1900–1945)

Known as Petronella van Daan in Anne Frank's diary. Name variations: known as Petronella van Daan in diary. Born on September 9, 1900; died in 1945; married Hermann van Pels; children: Peter.

Known as Petronella van Daan in the original diary, Auguste van Pels was transferred to Bergen-Belsen from Auschwitz, then to Buchenwald, then to Theresienstadt on April 9, 1945. Though it is certain that she died in the camps, the date is not known. Her son Peter was on the forced "death march" from Auschwitz to Mauthausen (Austria) where he died on May 5, 1945, three days before the liberation of the camp.

Between June 12, 1942, and August 1, 1944, Anne was attentive to her diary. The earlier sections list the travails of a budding teenager. Anne was indignant when all occupants of the Annex (especially her mother and Mrs. van Pels) felt obliged to aid in her upbringing, pointing

out her many shortcomings. Though Margot and Anne both had their every mood analyzed, Margot, that "paragon of virtue," got off easier. Then, on November 17, 1942, the debonair dentist Fritz Pfeffer (named Albert Dussel in the diary) joined them in the Annex. Pfeffer brought news of the fate of friends in the outside world that made the Annex inhabitants gloomy for days. Unfortunately for Anne, Pfeffer, who now shared her bedroom (Margot had moved into the room with her parents), turned out to be another disciplinarian, a long-winded one, at that. It was not easy to rebel against two sets of parents and a visiting dentist.

"Everyone thinks I'm showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I'm silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have an idea, lazy when I'm tired, selfish when I eat one bite more than I should, stupid, cowardly, calculating, etc., etc.," lamented Anne. "All day long I hear nothing but what an exasperating child I am, and although I laugh it off and pretend not to mind, I do mind."

Their day-to-day routine seldom varied. In the August 4–5, 1943, entries, Anne wrote:

Nine in the evening. Bedtime always begins in the Annex with an enormous hustle and bustle. Chairs are shifted, beds pulled out, blankets unfolded—nothing stays where it is during the daytime. I sleep on a small divan, which is only five feet long, so we have to add a few chairs to make it longer.… Ten o'clock. Time to put up the blackout screen and say good-night. For the next fifteen minutes, at least, the house is filled with the creaking of beds and the sigh of broken springs.… Approximately three o'clock. … Sometimes the guns go off during the night, between one and four. I'm never aware of it before it happens, but all of a sudden I find myself standing beside my bed, out of sheer habit.… Then I grab a pillow and a hand kerchief, throw on my robe and slippers and dash next door to Father.

Each day started at 6:45 with an alarm. All householders prepared for the silent hours when the workers were downstairs. "Margot and mother are nervous," wrote Anne.

"Shh … Father. Be quiet, Otto. Shh! … It's eight-thirty. Come here, you can't run the water anymore. Walk softly!" A sample of what's said to Father in the bathroom. At the stroke of half past eight, he has to be in the living room. No running water, no flushing toilet, no walking around, no noise whatsoever. As long as the office staff hasn't arrived, sounds travel more easily to the warehouse.

At 12:30, when the workers leave for lunch:

The whole gang breathes a sigh of relief.… Upstairs you can hear the thud of the vacuum cleaner on Mrs. van [P].'s beautiful and only rug.

Visitors would sometimes join them from below to listen to the BBC. Over Radio Orange, the underground radio, Queen Wilhelmina broadcast hope from England. "The time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews!" wrote Anne. "Who has inflicted this on us? Who has set us apart from all the rest?"

In the prolonged existence in close quarters, all of the inmates inevitably got on each other's nerves. "I wonder if everyone who shares a house sooner or later ends up at odds with their fellow residents," wrote Anne. "Or have we just had a stroke of bad luck? At mealtime, when Pfeffer helps himself to a quarter of the half-filled gravy boat and leaves the rest of us to do without, I lose my appetite and feel like jumping to my feet, knocking him off his chair and throwing him out the door."

They lived with terror. Air-raid warning sirens blared outside; planes with bellies filled with bombs droned overhead, anti-aircraft guns boomed, rooms shook under the bombing. Since the Nazis had shipped Dutch food and goods to Germany, rations had dwindled, leaving Netherlanders with a meager monthly allotment. Most of Holland was starving. Crime increased. On two different nights, there were break-ins in the warehouse below; in their helplessness, those in the Annex did not know whether the intruders were burglars or the Gestapo. The nights grew longer.

Anne had two diaries. The first version (version a) was written for herself. But in 1944, she heard Gerrit Bolkestein, the minister of education of the Dutch government in exile, broadcasting from London, exhorting the Dutch to keep accounts of the Nazi occupation, specifically letters and diaries. After the war, he said, a collection would be made. So Anne began to rewrite and edit her diary, adding passages from memory, cutting passages of little interest (version b). In the b version, she also revisited passages as a 15-year-old that she had written as a 13-year-old and commented upon them. She longed to be a journalist:

I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in my life, to become a journalist.… I can't imagine having to live like Mother, Mrs. van [Pels] and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift.

When Anne looked downcast, her mother exhorted her to think of those more miserable, "be grateful you're not in Poland." "This is where Mother and I differ greatly," wrote Anne. "Her advice in the face of melancholy is: 'Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it.' My advice is: 'Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer.'"

She longed to be outside.

Is it because I haven't been outdoors for so long that I've become smitten with nature? I remember a time when a magnificent blue sky, chirping birds, moonlight and budding blossoms wouldn't have captivated me.… [S]everal months ago, I happened to be upstairs one night when the window was open. I didn't go back down until it had to be closed again. The dark, rainy evening, the wind, the racing clouds, had me spellbound; it was the first time in a year and a half that I'd seen the night face-to-face.… [L]ooking at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars really does make me feel calm and hopeful.… Nature makes me feel humble and ready to face every blow with courage!

Anne grew out of her clothes; her eyes weakened. Clearly maturing, she began to see her mother's side of things a little more often, began to be less jealous of Margot's relationship with their father; even her attitude toward the van Pelses began to change. The girl she called "the good Anne" was coming to the fore more often.

"I think spring is inside me," she wrote on Saturday, February 12, 1944. "I feel spring awakening, I feel it in my entire body and soul. I have to force myself to act normally. I'm in a state of utter confusion, don't know what to read, what to write, what to do. I only know that I'm longing for something." Until then, she had longed for a girlfriend, for someone to confide in; now she noticed Peter van Pels. In the beginning, she had found Peter obnoxious, but something was changing. Despite protestations to Kitty of not being in love, Anne began to have something to look forward to: seeing and talking to Peter—every minute of every day, seeing and talking to Peter.

But events drove the group nearer the precipice. On March 1, 1944, there was another break-in downstairs, and Hermann van Pels may have inadvertently been seen by the thief. On March 14, those that supplied Miep with extra food coupons were arrested. Those in the Annex now dined on potatoes and kale. On Sunday, April 9, there was another break-in, and the night watchman alerted the police who searched the house. Anne and others in the Secret Annex had lain frozen through night, sure they had been found out.

They lived for the news of Allied victories: Tunis, Casablanca, Sicily. Mussolini resigned; Italy capitulated. And finally, on June 6, 1944, the invasion they had long been waiting for began. Over the BBC, they heard the words: "This is D-Day." One week later, Anne turned 15 and began to think it possible that she might be returning to school in October.

The world's been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the lowest of the low rule.

—Anne Frank

Sometime between 10 and 10:30 in the morning, on August 4, 1944, the Annex was raided by the German SD and Dutch members of the Security Police who had been tipped off by an anonymous caller. All eight in hiding were arrested, as well as two of their Dutch supporters. Four days later, the Franks were transported to Westerbork, a holding camp for the Jews in the north of Holland. On September 3, with the Allies 120 miles away, the Franks were herded onto a transport train for the two-day journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau; it was the last transport from the Netherlands to Auschwitz and contained 1,019 people (127 would survive).

On arrival, 549 were immediately sent to the gas chamber, including all children under 15 years of age. Since Anne had turned 15 that June, she escaped the selection and was sent to Barracks 29 along with her mother Edith and sister Margot. Since the women had been separated from the men, they did not know of Otto's fate. For the next two months, because Anne had scabies, most of their time was spent in what was known as the Krätzeblock (scabies barracks). Probably on October 28, 1944, the sisters were shipped to Bergen-Belsen, but Edith was forced to remain behind. Edith Frank died in Auschwitz of grief, hunger, and exhaustion, it is said, on January 6, 1945.

At this point in the war, living conditions were so terrible at Bergen-Belsen that 10,000 died without the help of gas chambers. It was winter; there was no food; the camp was notoriously overcrowded and disease was rampant. Margot and Anne had their hair chopped off and were put in a section composed of large tents. Shortly after, their tent blew down in a severe storm, and they were moved to an over-crowded barrack. "The Frank girls were so emaciated. They looked terrible," said Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder who was in the camp at the same time. "They had those hollowed-out faces, skin over bone. They were terribly cold. They had the least desirable places in the barrack, below, near the door, which was constantly opened and closed." In early March 1945, Anne and Margot Frank died of typhus within days of each other. Anne "stayed on her feet until Margot died," said Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper , who was also there as a political prisoner, "only then did she give in to her illness." The British liberated the camp a few weeks later.

The day the Franks were abducted, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl found Anne's diary, copy books, and papers strewn about the Secret Annex floor. Fortunately, Gies did not read the diary. If she had, she later claimed, she would have burned it to keep it out of the hands of the Gestapo: the diary contained the names of those who had helped the Franks. Instead, she hid it in her desk drawer throughout the last months of the war. After learning of Anne's death, Gies handed the diary over to Otto Frank who had survived and returned home.

Otto honored his daughter's wish by publishing the diary. Selecting material from both versions (which became version c), he omitted many of Anne's references to her emerging sexuality, her teenage angers, and her rejection of her mother. He also cut negative passages regarding others in the Annex. Published as Het Achterhuis (The Annex) in the Netherlands in 1947, the diary was eventually released in over 50 countries in 55 languages, and the Annex at No. 263 Prinsengracht became a museum.

When Otto Frank died in 1980, he willed Anne Frank's manuscripts to the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam. Since there were those who denied the authenticity of the diaries, the Institute did a thorough investigation, found the documents to be authentic beyond question, and released them in their entirety, including the Institute's examination of Anne's handwriting and materials concerning the Franks' arrest and deportation. In 1991, the Anne Frank Foundation (Anne Frank-Fonds) in Basel, Switzerland, decided to publish an unexpurgated edition of the diary, containing 30% more of the original. In the new version, the actual names of those in the Annex and those who assisted the Franks are used, while those who wished to remain anonymous are represented by initials.

"The struggle for identity, the fears, the doubts, above all the everydayness in the diary entries," writes Quindlen, "the worries about outgrown shoes, the romantic yearnings, and the ever-present conflicts with Mama and Margot reflect, mirror, and elevate the lives of millions who went about the business of studying, romancing, cooking, sewing, and struggling to live in the world until the Nazis ended their millions of ordinary, individual lives."

sources:

"As She Was," in People Weekly. May 13, 1996, p. 73.

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. Edited by Otto Frank and Mirjam Pressler. NY: Doubleday, 1995.

Gies, Miep, with Alison Leslie Gold. Anne Frank Remembered. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

Lindwer, Willy. The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank. NY: Random House, 1991.

van der Rol, Ruud, and Rian Verhoeven for the Anne Frank House. Anne Frank, Beyond the Diary: A Photographic Remembrance. Introduction by Anna Quindlen. NY: Viking, 193.

suggested reading:

Graver, Lawrence. An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995.

Rittner, Carol, ed. Anne Frank in the World: Essays and Reflections. M.E. Sharpe, 1997.

related media:

The Diary of Anne Frank, dramatization of the diary in two-acts by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award), directed by Garson Kanin, starring Susan Strasberg and Joseph Schildkraut, opened at the Cort Theater on October 5, 1955.

The Diary of Anne Frank, produced on Broadway at the Music Box Theater, opened on December 4, 1997, starring Natalie Portman , Linda Lavin, and George Hearn, adapted by Wendy Kesselman from the Goodrich-Hackett script, directed by James Lapine.

The Diary of Anne Frank, 20th Century-Fox film, 1959, starring Millie Perkins , Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters (who received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress), directed by George Stevens; screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett.

Anne Frank Remembered, written and directed by Jon Blair, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics (winner of an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, 1996).

The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, documentary by Willy Lindwer, first televised in the Netherlands, May 1988.