Anne Frank

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (June 12 1929 – c. March 1945) was a German Jewish girl who wrote a diary while in hiding with her family and four friends in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. Her family had moved to Amsterdam after the Nazis gained power in Germany but were trapped when the Nazi occupation extended into The Netherlands. As persecutions against the Jewish population increased, the family went into hiding in July 1942 in hidden rooms in Otto Frank's office building. After two years in hiding, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps where Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen within days of her sister, Margot, in March 1945. Her father, Otto, the only survivor of the group, returned to Amsterdam after the war ended, to find that her diary had been saved. Convinced that it was a unique record he took action to have it published.

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 http://www.niod.nl/annefrank/Who%20betrayed%20Anne%20Frank.pdf. Led by Schutzstaffel Sergeant Karl Silberbauer of the Sicherheitsdienst, the group included at least three members of the Security Police. The occupants 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. They later returned to the achterhuis, where they found Anne's papers strewn on the floor. They collected them, as well as several family photograph albums, and Gies resolved to return them to Anne after the war.

Related Topics:
August 4 - 1944 - Schutzstaffel - Karl Silberbauer - Sicherheitsdienst

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The members of the household were taken 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 on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp. They arrived after a three days' journey, and were separated 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 fifteen years – were selected and sent directly to the gas chambers where they were killed. Anne had turned fifteen three months earlier and was spared, and although everyone from the achterhuis survived this selection, Anne believed her father had been killed.

Related Topics:
Westerbork - September 2 - Auschwitz concentration camp - Gas chamber

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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 labour, and by night were crowded into freezing barracks. Disease was rampant and before long Anne's skin became badly infected by scabies.

Related Topics:
Tattoo - Slave labour - Scabies

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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 accommodate the influx of prisoners, Anne and Margot among them, and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased rapidly. Anne was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar (named "Lies" in the diary) and Nanette Blitz, who both survived the war. They said that Anne, naked but for a piece of blanket, explained she was infested with lice and had thrown her clothes away. They described her as bald, emaciated and shivering but although ill herself, she told them that she was more concerned about Margot, whose illness seemed to be more severe. Goslar and Blitz did not see Margot who remained in her bunk, too weak to walk. Anne said they were alone as both of their parents were dead.

Related Topics:
October 28 - Bergen-Belsen - Lice

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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.

Related Topics:
1945 - Typhus - Epidemic - British troops - April 15

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After the war, it was estimated that of the 110,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation, only 5,000 survived.

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The individual fates of the other occupants of the achterhuis, their helpers, and other people associated with Anne Frank, are discussed further. See article: People associated with Anne Frank.

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