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 for her
thirteenth birthday and chronicles the events of her
life from June 12, 1942 until its final entry of August
1, 1944. It was eventually translated from its original
Dutch into many languages and became one of the world's
most widely read books. There have also been many
theatrical productions based on the diary. Described
as the work of a mature and insightful mind, it provides
an intimate examination of daily life under Nazi occupation;
through her writing, Anne Frank has become one of
the most renowned and discussed of the Holocaust victims.
Early life
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am
Main, Germany, the second daughter of Otto Heinrich
Frank (May 12, 1889 August 19, 1980) and 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 non-Jewish citizens, and the
children grew up with Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish
friends. The Franks were Reform Jews, observing many
of the traditions of Judaism. Edith Frank was the
more devout parent. 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, and Adolf
Hitler's Nazi Party won. 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 accommodation for his family.
Otto Frank began working at the Opekta
Works, a company which sold the fruit extract pectin,
and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede
Square) in an Amsterdam suburb. By February 1934,
Edith and the children had arrived in Amsterdam, and
the children were enrolled in the Montessori school.
Margot demonstrated ability in arithmetic, and Anne
showed aptitude for reading and writing. They were
also recognised as highly distinct personalities,
Margot being well mannered, reserved, and studious,
while Anne was outspoken, energetic, and extroverted.
In 1938, Otto Frank started a second
company in partnership with Hermann van Pels, a butcher,
who had fled Osnabrück in Germany with his family.
In 1939 Edith's mother, Rosa Holländer, came
to live with the Franks, and remained with them until
her death in January 1942. Margot and Anne were excelling
in their studies, and had 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.
The period chronicled in the diary
Before going into hiding
For her thirteenth birthday, on June
12, 1942, 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, and described herself and her family,
and her daily life at home and at school, prefacing
her entries with the salutation "Dear Kitty".
She wrote about her school grades, her friends, boys
she flirted with and the places she liked to visit
in her neighbourhood. While these early entries demonstrate
that in many ways her life was that of a typical schoolgirl,
she also refers to changes that had taken place since
the German occupation. Some references are seemingly
casual and not emphasised, however in some entries
she provides more detail of the oppression that was
steadily increasing. 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.
As the German occupation increased, Anne Frank made
more and more references, as her life was becoming
more effected.
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 his most trusted employees,
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.
Life in the achterhuis
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, situated a block
from the Westerkerk, was nondescript, old and typical
of buildings in the western quarters of Amsterdam.
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, they were 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. 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 wrote that they had little in common as her mother
was too 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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.
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.
After the war, it was estimated that
of the 110,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands
during the Nazi occupation, only 5,000 survived.
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.
The Diary of a Young Girl
Publication of the diary
Otto Frank survived and returned to Amsterdam. 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 it was only then that Miep Gies gave
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. When asked many years
later to recall his first reaction he said simply,
"I never knew my little Anne was so deep".
Anne's diary began as a private expression
of her thoughts and she wrote several times that she
would never allow anyone to read it. She candidly
described her life, her family and companions, and
their situation, while beginning to recognise her
ambition to write fiction for publication. 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
was supplemented by additional notebooks and loose-leaf
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. Otto Frank
used her original diary, known as "version A",
and her edited version, known as "version B",
to produce 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 fascism, more so than all the evidence
at Nuremberg put together". 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 Anne Frank
to new generations of readers.
In 1986, 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.
In 1988, Cornelis Suijka former director
of the Anne Frank Foundation and president of the
U.S. Center for Holocaust Education Foundation announced
that he was in the possession of five pages that had
been removed by Otto Frank from the diary prior to
publication. Suijk claimed that Otto Frank gave these
pages to him shortly before his death in 1980. The
missing diary entries contain critical remarks by
Anne Frank about her parents' strained marriage, and
show Anne's lack of affection for her mother. Some
controversy ensued when Suijk claimed publishing rights
over the five pages and intended to sell them to raise
money for his U.S. Foundation. The Netherlands Institute
for War Documentation, the formal owner of the manuscript,
demanded the pages to be handed over. In 2000 the
Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science agreed
to donate US$ 300,000 to Suijk's Foundation, and the
pages were returned in 2001. Since then, they have
been included in new editions of the diary.
Praise for Anne Frank and the diary
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: "one
voice speaks for six million the voice not of a sage
or a poet but of an ordinary little girl". 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 Anne 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.
After winning a humanitarian award from the Anne Frank
Foundation in 1994, Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd
in Johannesburg, saying he had read Anne 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".
In her closing message in Melissa
Müller's biography of Anne Frank, Miep Gies attempted
to dispel what she felt was a growing misconception
that "Anne symbolizes the six million victims
of the Holocaust", writing, "Anne's life
and death were her own individual fate, an individual
fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot,
and should not, stand for the many individuals whom
the Nazis robbed of their lives... But her fate helps
us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because
of the Holocaust".
The diary has also been praised for
its literary merits. Commenting on Anne Frank's writing
style, the dramatist Meyer Levin, who worked with
Otto Frank on a dramatisation of the diary shortly
after its publication, praised it for "sustaining
the tension of a well-constructed novel", 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". Her 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, with the comment, "he said that the diary
encompasses so many areas of life that each reader
can find something that moves him personally".
Challenges by Holocaust deniers and legal
action
Efforts have been made to discredit the diary, prompting
Teresien da Silva to comment on behalf of Anne Frank
House in 1999, "for many right-wing extremists
(Anne) proves to be an obstacle. Her personal testimony
of the persecution of the Jews and her death in a
concentration camp are blocking the way to a rehabilitation
of national-socialism". The Holocaust denier
David Irving has been a consistent critic of the diary,
saying that although he accepts that in its original
form it is "the work of a pubescent Jewish girl",
he does not accept the published version 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."[12] (http://www.ihr.org/books/kulaszka/35irving.html)
Since the 1950s Holocaust denial has
been a criminal offence throughout much of Europe,
and the law has been used to prevent a rise in neo-Nazi
activity. In 1959 Otto Frank took legal action in
Lübeck against Lothar Stielau, a school teacher
and former Hitler Youth member who published a school
paper that described the diary as a forgery. The court
examined the diary, and in 1960 found it to be genuine.
Stielau recanted his earlier statement, and Otto Frank
did not pursue the case any further.
In 1958, Simon Wiesenthal was challenged
by a group of protesters at a performance of The Diary
of Anne Frank in Vienna who asserted that Anne Frank
had never existed, and who told Wiesenthal to prove
her existence by finding the man who had arrested
her. He began searching for Karl Silberbauer and found
him in 1963. When interviewed, Silberbauer readily
admitted his role, and identifed Anne Frank from a
photograph as one of the people arrested. He provided
a full account of events and recalled emptying a briefcase
full of papers onto the floor. His statement corroborated
the version of events that had previously been presented
by witnesses such as Otto Frank.
In 1976 Otto Frank took action against
Heinz Roth of Frankfurt, who published pamphlets stating
the diary was a forgery. The judge ruled that if he
published further statements he would be subjected
to a 500,000 Deutschmark fine and a six months' jail
sentence. Two cases were dismissed by German courts
in 1978 and 1979 on the grounds of freedom of speech,
as the complaint was not filed by an "injured
party". The court ruled in each case that if
a further complaint was made by an injured party,
such as Otto Frank, a charge of slander could follow.
The controversy reached its peak in 1980 with the
arrest and trial of two neo-Nazis, Ernst Römer
and Edgar Geiss, who were tried and found guilty of
producing and distributing literature denouncing the
diary as a forgery, following a complaint by Otto
Frank. During their appeal, a team of historians examined
the documents in consultation with Otto Frank, and
determined them to be genuine. With Otto Frank's death
in 1980, the original diary, including letters and
loose sheets, were willed to the Netherlands Institute
for War Documentation, who commissioned a forensic
study of the diary through the Netherlands Ministry
of Justice in 1986. 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.
Legacy
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.
Otto Frank insisted that the aim of the foundation
would be to foster contact and communication between
young people of different cultures, religions or racial
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 achterhuis, 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 on which 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 neighbours, 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. 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 Frank 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 Swiss 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.
It provides funding for the medical treatment of the
Righteous Among the Nations on a yearly basis. It
has aimed to educate young people against racism and
loaned some of Anne Frank's papers to the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. for an
exhibition in 2003. Its annual report of the same
year gave some indication of its effort to contribute
on a global level, with its support of projects in
Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom
and the United States. teroid 5535 Annefrank is named
after her.
source from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
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