Today we have a special blog topic.
Today’s topic will be about Anne Frank, as from the time her diary today turns 75.
I am sure that all of you know the story of this young girl Anne Frank and her diary, where she so preciously wrote about all her daily life events while trying hard her and her family to survive from the dictatorship of Hitler.
In this blog I will write down everything from the beginning, as we all know, about Anne Frank, including her life, the place they lived etc.
So let dive into this wonderful but at the same time tragic story.
“I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.”
Anne Frank
Who was Anne Frank:
Anne Frank was a German – Jewish girl, victim of the Holocaust, who is famous for her diary where she wrote about all her experiences during the time of her hiding.
She was born Annelies Marie Frank in Frankfurt, German on June 12 1929 Her parents, Otto, a German business man and Edith Frank. She also had an older sister, Margot.
They were liberal Jews. They lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various religions. Edith and Otto were devoted parents, who were interested in scholarly pursuits and had an extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read. At the time of Anne's birth, the family lived in a house at Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt-Dornbusch, where they rented two floors. In 1931, the family moved to Ganghoferstrasse 24 in a fashionable liberal area of Dornbusch, called the Dichterviertel (Poets' Quarter). Both houses still exist
In 1933, after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won the federal election and Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Reich, Edith Frank and the children went to stay with Edith's mother Rosa in Aachen. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organize the business and to arrange accommodations for his family. He began working at the Opekta Works, a company that sold the fruit extract pectin. Edith travelled back and forth between Aachen and Amsterdam and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in the Rivierenbuurt neighbourhood of Amsterdam, where many more Jewish-German refugees settled.
After moving to Amsterdam, Anne and Margot Frank were enrolled in school—Margot in public school and Anne in the 6th Montessori School. Despite initial problems with the Dutch language, Margot became a star pupil in Amsterdam. Anne soon felt at home at the Montessori School and met children of her own age, like Hanneli Goslar, who would later become one of her best friends
In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company, Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, picking salts, and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages. Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. A Jewish butcher, he had fled Osnabruck with his family. In 1939, Edith Frank's mother came to live with the Franks, and remained with them until her death in January 1942
In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon followed. Otto Frank tried to arrange for the family to emigrate to the United States—the only destination that seemed to him to be viable but Frank's application for a visa was never processed, due to circumstances such as the closing of the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam and the loss of all the paperwork there, including the visa application.
After the summer holidays in 1941, Anne learned that she would no longer be allowed to go to the Montessori School as Jewish children had to attend Jewish schools. From then on Anne, like her sister Margot, went to the Jewish Lyceum an exclusive Jewish secondary school in Amsterdam opened in September 1941.
Life before going to hiding:
For her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, Frank received an autograph book, bound with red-and-white checkered cloth and with a small lock on the front. Frank decided she would use it as a diary, and had named it Kitty. She began writing in it almost immediately. In her entry dated 20 June 1942, she lists many of the restrictions placed upon the lives of the Dutch Jewish population.
In the summer of 1942, the systematic deportation of Jews from the Netherlands started. Otto and Edith Frank planned to go into hiding with the children on 16 July 1942, but when Margot received a call-up notice from the Zentralstelle fur judische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) on 5 July, ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp, they were forced to move the plan ten days forward. Shortly before going into hiding, Anne gave her friend and neighbor Toosje Kupers a book, a tea set, and a tin of marbles. On 6 July, the Frank family left a note for the Kupers, asking them to take care of their cat Moortje. As the Associated Press reports: "'I'm worried about my marbles, because I'm scared they might fall into the wrong hands,' Kupers said Anne told her. 'Could you keep them for me for a little while?'"
Life in Secret Annex:
During the first half of July 1942, Anne and her family went into hiding. They were eventually joined by four other Jews as well—Hermann, Auguste, and Peter van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer. For two years, they lived in a secret apartment at 263 Prinsengracht Street. The apartment was located behind the business offices where Otto Frank had worked as company director. Anne referred to the hiding place in her diary as the Secret Annex. Otto Frank's friends and colleagues, Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, Johan Voskuijl, Bep Voskuijl, Jan Gies, and Miep Gies, had helped to prepare the hiding place and smuggled food and clothing to the Franks at great risk to their own lives.
Over the next two years, Anne wrote faithfully in the diary, which she came to consider a friend, addressing many of the entries to “Dear Kitty.” In the journal and later notebooks, Anne recounted the day-to-day life within the annex. The close quarters and sparse supplies led to various arguments among the inhabitants, and the outgoing Anne came to find the conditions stifling. Heightening tensions was the ever-present concern that they would be discovered. However, many entries involve typical adolescent issues—jealousy toward her sister; annoyance with others, especially her mother; and an increasing sexual awareness. Anne wrote candidly about her developing body, and she experienced a brief romance with Peter van Pels. She also discussed her hopes for the future, which included becoming a journalist or a writer. In addition to the diary, Anne penned several short stories and compiled a list of “beautiful sentences” from other works.
After learning of plans to collect diaries and other papers to chronicle people’s wartime experiences, Anne began to rework her journal for possible publication as a novel entitled Het Achterhuis (“The Secret Annex”). She notably created pseudonyms for all the inhabitants, eventually adopting Anne Robin as her alias. Pfeffer—whom Anne had come to dislike as the two often argued over the use of a desk—was named Albert Dussel, the surname of which is German for “idiot.”
Anne’s last diary entry was written on August 1, 1944. Three days later the secret annex was discovered by the Gestapo. It has been long thought that the authorities acted after being tipped off by an anonymous Dutch caller. But a more recent theory is that the Germans discovered the hiding place by chance, while investigating reports that illegal work and fraud with ration coupons were occurring at the house
Arrest:
On the morning of 4 August 1944, the Achterhuis was stormed by a group of German uniformed police (Grüne Polizei) led by SS-Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer of the Sicherheitsdienst. The Franks, Van Pelses, and Pfeffer were taken to RSHA headquarters, where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5 August, they were transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau in German-occupied Poland. This was the last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz.
The transport arrived in Auschwitz two days later with 1,019 Jews on board. Men and women were separated. All of the Secret Annex residents were selected for forced labor.
Like other Jews selected for labor, the women chosen from this transport, including Anne, Edith, and Margot, were tattooed with prisoner numbers. Records indicating their exact numbers have not been preserved. Although Anne Frank's death certificate documents her movement between camps, it does not include her tattoo ID number either.
Anne and her sister, Margot were transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany in early November 1944
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 various concentration camps until the war's end. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were questioned and threatened by the Security Police but not detained. They returned to the Achterhuis the following day, and 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. On 7 August 1944, Gies attempted to facilitate the release of the prisoners by confronting Silberbauer and offering him money to intervene, but he refused.
Death:
Anne Frank died in February or March 1945, shortly before British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. Anne Frank died at the age of 15. Margot Frank died at the age of 19, also in February or March 1945. Both Margot and Anne died of typhus.
Witnesses later testified Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock. Anne died a day after MargotThe exact dates of Margot's and Anne's deaths were not recorded. It was long thought that their deaths occurred only a few weeks before British soldiers liberated the camp on 15 April 1945, but research in 2015 indicated that they may have died as early as February. Among other evidence, witnesses recalled that the Franks displayed typhus symptoms by 7 February, and Dutch health authorities reported that most untreated typhus victims died within 12 days of their first symptoms. Additionally, Hanneli Goslar stated her father, Hans Goslar died one or two weeks after their first meeting; Hans died on 25 February 1945. After the war, it was estimated that only 5,000 of the 107,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands between 1942 and 1944 survived. An estimated 30,000 Jews remained in the Netherlands, with many people aided by the Dutch underground. Approximately two-thirds of this group survived the war
The Diary of a Young Girl:
In July 1945, after the sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper, who were with Anne and Margot Frank in Bergen-Belsen, confirmed the deaths of the Frank sisters, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank the diary and a bundle of loose notes that she had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realized Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding. In his memoir, he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognizing the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter. He saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting, "For me it was a revelation… I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings… She had kept all these feelings to herself". Moved by her repeated wish to be an author, he began to consider having it published.
After Otto was unable to find a publisher, the work was given to historian Jan Romein, who was so impressed that he wrote about the diary in a front-page article for the newspaper Het Parool in 1946. The resulting attention led to a publishing deal with Contact, and Het Achterhuis was released on June 25, 1947. An immediate best seller in the Netherlands, the work began to appear elsewhere. In 1952 the first American edition was published under the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl; it included an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt. The work was eventually translated into more than 65 languages, and it was later adapted for the stage and screen. All proceeds went to a foundation established in Anne’s honour. In 1995, 15 years after Otto’s death, a new English version of the Diary was published. It contained material that had been previously omitted. In an effort to extend the copyright date—which was to begin expiring in various European countries in 2016—Otto was added as a coauthor in 2015.
Written with insight, humour, and intelligence, the Diary became a classic of war literature, personalizing the Holocaust and offering a moving coming-of-age story. To many, the book was also a source of inspiration and hope
The Secret Annex:
The Secret Annex still exist and it operates as a museum and its located at Prinsengracht 261B, 1016 GV Amsterdam. As a visitor, it is said that you experience this story through quotes, photos, videos, and original items.
That's All She Wrote
Laura Melkonian
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