On Friday morning, August 4, 1944, a German police officer accompanied by four men in civilian clothes entered the building. The men had been told of the families in hiding And they knew exactly where to go to find them. No one knows who the informer was. The police emptied the satchel in which Anne kept her diaries, notebooks and photographs so they could use it to carry away food and valuables. The papers and photos were recovered later by Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, two of the Dutch Christians who courageously kept the occupants alive (the others were Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, and Jan Gies).
Anne and her group were first sent to the Wester bork transit camp. In September they were transported to the extermination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau where Anne’s mother and Herman van Pels died very soon. Peter van Pels perished in Mauthausen. Auguste van Pels died somewhere in or near Theresienstadt. Anne and Margo were sent to Bergen-Belsen camp, where in March 1945, they died of typhus and starvation. Anne was just short of her 16 th birthday.
Of the group, Otto Frank was the only survivor. He was freed when the Russians liberated Auschwitz in January 1945. When Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam after the war, Miep Gies gave him Anne’s diaries and exercise books. When he knew that Anne was dead he began copying whole sections out of the diaries to send to other surviving family and friends.
Since parts of the diary had been rewritten and revised by Anne herself, he edited the text also, omitting parts he deemed too personal to be included in a document to be read by others. Those who read the excerpts recognized the value of such a document and urged him to seek a publisher. The manuscript was corrected and edited by several people in addition to Otto Frank. Several publishers rejected the manuscript before it was at last accepted in 1947 by a Dutch publisher who printed only a small number of copies. The edition was well received and in 1950, there was a German and a French edition. In 1952, an edition of the diaries was published in the United States where it was received with great acclaim.
The Essay on Anne Frank 5
On June 12, 1929, at 7:30 A.M. a baby girl was born in Frankfurt, Germany. No one realized that this infant, who was Jewish, was destined to become one of the worlds most famous victims of World War II. Her name was Anne Frank, and her parents were Edith Frank Hollandar and Otto Frank. She had one sister, Margot, who was three years older than she was. Anne led a happy and normal childhood, and on ...
A dramatic version of the story of Anne’s ordeal was presented on the stage. In the 1950’s, people who hated Jews and wanted to discredit the Holocaust and anything connected with it, began to publish articles stating that the diary was a hoax. When Otto Frank died in 1980, he gave the diary to the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. There was so much controversy connected with the authenticity of the diary, the N. S. I.
W. D. felt obliged to subject every part of the diary to scientific testing in order to determine its authenticity once and for all. They tested the paper, the ink, the glue that bound the book together, the handwriting, the postage stamps and censorship stamps on postcards and letters that Anne and her family sent during their time in hiding. The forensic experts produced a highly technical, 250-page report on their findings.
It proved that the diaries were written by one person during the period in question and the changes made to the diaries were of a very limited nature. It proved beyond any doubt that the diaries were authentic. Anne Frank’s diary is a testament to her keen powers of observation and the growth of her maturity and insight. It has had an emotional impact on all who have read it.
The diary makes us aware of what it is like to live each day in fear of being ripped from one’s home and loved ones, the fear of losing one’s very life only because of having been born a Jew in a land and at a time when barbaric Nazi ideology ruled.
