ANNE FRANK
“Sometimes when you get disappointment it makes you stronger.”
David Rudisha
During my recent visit to Amsterdam in January 2019, while I was doing my city tour with friends, I came to know about Anne Frank. Anne Frank was born in 1929 in Germany. Her family moved to Amsterdam in 1933, and she died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Her diary, published as The Diary of a Young Girl, which documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, is one of the world’s most widely known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.
During the tour, I visited the secret place where Anne and her family with a few other Jews hid during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. At the time, unemployment was high, and poverty was severe in Germany. It was also the period in which Adolf Hitler and his party gained increasingly more supporters.
Hitler hated the Jews and blamed them for the problems in the country. He took advantage of the rampant anti-Semitic sentiments in Germany. The hatred of Jews and the poor economic situation made Anne’s parents, Otto and Edith Frank, decide to move to Amsterdam. There, Otto founded a company that traded in pectin, a gelling agent for making jam.
Before long, Anne felt right at home in the Netherlands. She learned the language, made new friends, and went to a Dutch school near her home. Her father worked hard to get his business off the ground, but it was not easy. Otto also tried to set up a company in England, but the plan fell through. Things looked up when he started selling herbs and spices in addition to the pectin.
On September 1, 1939, when Anne was 10 years old, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and so the Second World War began. Not long after, on May 10, 1940, the Nazis also invaded the Netherlands. Five days later, the Dutch army surrendered. Slowly but surely, the Nazis introduced more laws and regulations that made the lives of Jews increasingly more difficult. For instance, Jews could no longer visit parks, cinemas, or non-Jewish shops. The rules meant that more places became off-limits to Anne. Her father lost his company, as Jews were no longer allowed to run their own businesses. All Jewish children, including Anne, had to go to separate Jewish schools.
The Secret Annex
The Nazis took things further one step at the time. Jews had to start wearing a Star of David on their clothes, and there were rumors that all Jews would have to leave the Netherlands. When Margot (Anne’s sister three years her senior) received a call to report for a so-called “labor camp” in Nazi Germany on July 5, 1942, her parents were suspicious. They did not believe the call was about work and decided to go into hiding the next day to escape persecution.
In the spring of 1942, Anne’s father had started furnishing a hiding place in the annex of his business premises at Prinsengracht 263. He received help from his former colleagues. Before long, they were joined by four more people. The hiding place was cramped. Anne had to keep very quiet and was often afraid.
Anne Keeps a Diary
On her 13th birthday, shortly before they went into hiding, Anne was presented with a diary. During their two years in hiding, Anne wrote about events in the Secret Annex, but also about her feelings and thoughts. In addition, she wrote short stories, started on a novel, and copied passages from the books she read in her “Book of Beautiful Sentences.” Writing helped her pass the time.
When the Minister of Education of the Dutch government in England made an appeal on Radio Orange to hold on to war diaries and documents, Anne was inspired to rewrite her individual diaries into one running story, titled “Het Achterhuis” (The Secret Annex).
The Hiding Place is Discovered
Anne started rewriting her diary, but before she was done, she and the other people in hiding were discovered and arrested by police officers on August 4, 1944. Hermine “Miep” Gies was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank and her family, and despite the raid, Miep retrieved Anne Frank’s diaries and saved them in her desk drawer.
Anne is Deported to Auschwitz
Via the offices of the Sicherheitsdienst, the German security police, the prison in Amsterdam, and the Westerbork transit camp, the people from the Secret Annex were put on transport to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. The train journey took three days, during which Anne and over a thousand others were packed closely together in cattle wagons. There was little food and water and only a barrel for a toilet.
Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Nazi doctors checked to see who would and who would not be able to do heavy forced labor. Around 350 people from Anne’s transport were immediately taken to the gas chambers and murdered. Anne was sent to the labor camp for women with her sister and mother. Otto ended up in a camp for men.
Anne Dies in Bergen-Belsen
In early November 1944, Anne was put on transport again. Together with her sister, she was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her parents stayed behind in Auschwitz. The conditions in Bergen-Belsen were horrible, too. There was a lack of food, and it was cold; and Anne, like her sister, contracted typhus. In February 1945, they both died owing to its effects, Margot first, Anne shortly afterward.
Anne’s father Otto was the only one of the people from the Secret Annex to survive the war. He was liberated from Auschwitz by the Russians, and during his long journey back to the Netherlands, he learned that his wife Edith had died. Once in the Netherlands, he heard that Anne and Margot were no longer alive as well.
Anne’s Diary Becomes World Famous
Anne’s writing made a deep impression on Otto. He read that Anne had wanted to become a writer or a journalist and that she had intended to publish her stories about life in the Secret Annex. Friends convinced Otto to publish the diary, and in June 1947, 3,000 copies of Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) were printed.
The Legacy
The book was later translated into around 70 languages and adapted for stage and screen.
People all over the world were introduced to Anne’s story, and in 1960, the hiding place became a museum: the Anne Frank House. Until his death in 1980, Otto remained closely involved with the Anne Frank House and museum. He hoped that readers of the diary would become aware of the dangers of discrimination, racism, and hatred of Jews.
Yes I Can
“If you think you are beaten, you are
If you think you dare not, you don’t,
If you like to win, but you think you can’t
It is almost certain you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!”
Walter D. Wintle