These pictures are from my first visit 12 years ago. I could not photograph or video tape this time.
In July 1942, Otto Frank, his wife Edith, and their two daughters, Margot and Anne went into hiding in the upper floors of Mr. Frank's business building on the Prinsengracht (Prince's Canal) in Amsterdam. The Franks had left Germany many years earlier when rumblings against Jews began.(1933) Anne, who could speak German, as she was born there, went to Dutch schools. Her famous diary is written entirely in Dutch. The main reason to go into hiding was because a summons came ordering Margot to "report for work in the east". East meant imprisonment.
A few months after they went into hiding, they were joined by the van Pels family (Hermann, Auguste, and their son, Peter) and Fritz Pfeffer.
The bookcase built to hide the secret annex.
On August 4, 1944 the German Security Police received an anonymous phone call: "There are Jews hiding at 263 Prinsengracht." All eight people were arrested, along with two of the office people helping them, Jo Kleiman and Victor Kugler. Other office workers, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were not arrested. It was Miep who went upstairs after the arrest and found Anne's diary and other papers. Extensive investigations after the war have still not revealed who was responsible fo the betrayal.
Mr. Frank had thought this over very carefully, and asked people he knew he could trust. There were workers in the warehouse who were not told about the people hiding above them. The rooms took a few weeks to get ready. He even managed to bring Anne's movie star picture collection.
During her stay, Anne kept a diary, and when she had filled it, loose paper and other notebooks were brought in. Anne was a teenager, not an elementary child. She had plans to be a writer as an adult. During the last few months of her hiding, she started to edit and rewrite her diary. She had planned on writing a book about hiding when the war was over. Her title would have been The Secret Annex.
On the walls of one of the rooms, Anne had pasted all kinds of images to make the room more cheerful. These includes postcards, a drawing of Leonardo di Vinci, Shirley Temple, and the English Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret. (Elizabeth is now Queen of England.) Several other American film stars have pictures on the walls, and I have often wondered if they ever visited the museum and found their image glued to the wall. In Anne's words
Our little room looked very bare at first with nothing on the walls; but thanks to Daddy who had brought my film-star collection and picture postcards on beforehand, and with the aid of a paste pot and brush, I have transformed the walls into one gigantic picture. This makes it look much more cheerful. - Anne Frank, July, 11, 1942/Critical Edition
Occasionally, at night, Mr. Frank had to go downstairs to balance the books - he was still running a company. Margot and Anne occasionally went with him. This was dangerous as they could have been seen. Anne describes one of these trips as "creepy."
While they were in hiding, they did have a radio. They learned that Jews were being gassed. Mr. Frank also kept a map of the Allied Forces and their whereabouts in France.
The fate of the eight people in hiding is known. They were arrested August 4, 1944. They were first sent to Westerbork, a camp in the Netherlands, and then on to Auschwitz.
- Hermann van Pels was gassed at Auschwitz in September/October 1944
- Fritz Pfeffer died of exhaustion on December 20, 1944 at the concentration camp at Neuengamme.
- Edith Frank died of exhaustioon on January 6, 1945 in Auschwitz.
- Margot Frank contracted typhus and died in March in 1945 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
- Anne Frank also contracted typhus and died a few days after Margot. (Over 35,000 people died during this typhus outbreak.)
- Auguste van Pels died in April 1945, while being transported from Bergen-Belsen to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
- Peter van Pels died on May 5, 1945 in the sick bay of the Mauthausen camp.
- Otto Frank survived Auschwitz and returned to Amsterdam in June 1945.
- Bergen-Belsen was liberated on April 15, 1945. It is believed by people who knew Anne during her last few months, that had she known her father was still alive, she may have tried to rally to stay alive. She knew her mother and sister were dead, and she had given up her will to live.
- At one point the eight people were only 120 miles from Allied Forces.
When he learned the fate of his daughters, Otto was given Anne's diary and papers that had been held in keeping by Miep. Mr. Frank had agreed to publish her diary. The first printing was under Anne's title The Secret Annex in 1947. He did change the names of some of the people Anne mentioned in her diary. The diary, notebooks and loose papers that make up the book have now been translated into almost 70 languages. Anne's original red-checked diary is in its own separate room with special lighting so that it can be preserved.
Mr. Frank remarried in 1953 and lived in Basel Switzerland. He died in 1980 at the age of 91. During his life after WWII, he was very active in making the secret annex accessible to the public as a museum. Shortly after the arrest of the people in hiding, everything was removed from the hiding place. (Good thing Miep got there first!) When the hiding place became a museum in 1960, Mr. Frank wanted the rooms to remain unfurnished. To show what it must have looked like for the families living there, small scale models were made in 1961 based on specific details provided by Mr. Frank.
A book The Last seven months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer tells about Anne's life when she entered the concentration camps. The six women who knew her, one of them from childhood, survived and have added their stories to Anne's. Anne Frank Remembered, is the Academy Award winning best documentary film about Anne's life. When this film won its award, Miep Gies was allowed to accept the Oscar.
When visiting this museum it is important to know that the stairwells are extremely steep, and cannot be navigated by those with knee problems. Strollers and wheelchairs cannot be accomodated.
Other excellent books are Upon the Head of the Goat, and Grace in the Wilderness by Aranka Siegal, who survived Bergen-Belsen. The first book is a Newbery Honor Book and tells about life before Bergen-Belsen. The second book tells about how the Red Cross locates Aranka (called Piri in the book) and her sister to Sweden, whether they wanted to go or not, and about finding out what happened to their familes. Mrs. Siegal refused to write about her life in the camps stating it was too painful. She did not know Anne Frank, although they were in Bergen-Belsen at the same time.
