Anne Frank

A quarter of an hour later, someone knocked on the bookcase door. The knocking continued
and they could hear someone pulling and pushing at the door.
Then they learned what had happened. Johannes Kleiman explained that a carpenter was in
the house to check the fire extinguishers, and that he had not had time to warn them.
It was a great relief to the Frank family when the carpenter left.
Anne enjoyed writing very much and didn't confine herself to her diary. In 1943, she also
started writing a book titled ''Stories and Events from the Secret Annex''. This book included
descriptions of happenings in the Secret Annex and memories from Anne's schooldays, as
well as fairy tales and other imaginary tales, which she called ''Made-Up Stories''.
In the year 1944, Anne was more than 14 and a half years old. The group of eight people had
been hiding in the Secret Annex for a year and a half.
Anne had noticed that her thoughts and feelings were changing, and she wrote about this
in her diary.
She spent much more time thinking about all sorts of things. And also viewed the people with whom she was hiding in a new light. Anne also noticed that she was changing physically. Anne celebrated her fifteenth birthday on June 12, six days after the Normandy
invasion.
The families had been in the Secret Annex for almost two years. Despite the massive invasion, the liberation of Europe still seemed a long way away, to them, and life on the
Prinsengracht went on as casual.
On July 21, 1944, Anne was happy and optimistic. The news about the war seemed hopeful.
Eleven days later, she made one last entry in her diary. On August 4 between ten o'clock
and half past ten in the morning.
The German police stormed the Secret Annex. They had been betrayed.
This is the last entry that Anne made in her diary, Tuesday, August 1, 1944. Anne wrote that she thought it was a shame that the others in the Secret Annex only really knew one side of
her. She was often berated and criticized for that side, and not taken seriously by the adults
because of it.
I have already told you before that I have, as it were, a dual personality.
One half embodies my exuberant cheerfulness, making fun of everything, vivacity, and above
all the way I take everything lightly . . . This side is usually lying in wait and pushes away
the other, which is much better, deeper and purer.
No one knows Anne's better side.
Three days after Anne wrote this the German police entered the Secret Annex.
Who betrayed the hiding place to the Germans remains a mystery to this day.
The family spent four days locked in holding cells. Then on August 8 they were transferred to the Westerbork camp. They stayed there for the whole of the month of August in the so-called ''punishment barracks''. They were considered ''punishable prisoners'' since they had
not given themselves up when the call-up notices were sent but had been captured in hiding.
On September 3, 1944, the eight prisoners joined a thousand others on the last train bound
for the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
They were cooped up in a boxcar for days, crammed together with about seventy other people, and arrived in Auschwitz on the night of September 5.
More than half of the people were killed in the gas chambers the very next day, including
nearly all the children under fifteen. Since Anne had just had her fifteenth birthday, she was
spared. The men and women were separated, most never to see each other again.
The women had to walk to the women's camp in Birkenau. Edith Frank and her two daughters stayed together.
Mrs. Van Pels also went to the women's camp. Otto Frank, Hermann Van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer went to the men's camp.
The conditions in Auschwitz were indescribably wretched. The prisoners were given hardly
anything to eat and no medicines were available.
Hundreds died from starvation and illness every day. The guards beat and clubbed people
to death for no reason at all. Every day new groups of prisoners were sent to the gas chambers. No one could be sure of his or her life. Every day could be the last.
Hermann Van Pels was murdered in the gas chambers a couple of weeks after his arrival in
Auschwitz - Birkenau. Fritz Pfeffer ended up in the Neuengamme concentration camp,
where he died on December 20, 1944.
The Russian Army was approaching from the west. The Germans knew that they had lost
the war. Many of the camps were cleared and dismantled in an effort to erase the evidence
of their crimes. Prisoners were shot and buried in mass graves. Others were transferred to
concentration camps farther from the front.
Anne and her sister Margot were taken to the Bergen-Belsen, concentration camp in October
1944. Anne and Margot died there in March 1945.
The camp was liberated the following month. Anne and Margot had to leave their mother
behind in Auschwitz at the end of October 1944.
Edith Frank survived in Auschwitz for another two months. She died on January 6, 1945.
Otto Frank was the only one of the group from the Secret Annex to survive the war.
He was still in Auschwitz when the Russians liberated the camp on January 27, 1945.
He wanted to go back to Amsterdam, but the war had not ended yet in the Netherlands.
Otto started the long journey home to the port of Odessa on the Black Sea.  From Odessa,
he went by boat to Marsailles in France, and continued by train and truck to Amsterdam.
Otto Frank did not arrive in Amsterdam until June 3, when he immediately went to see Miep and Jan Gies.
Their reunion was filled with joy and sadness. Otto Frank said he had heard that his wife,
Edith, was dead, but he still hoped that Anne and Margot were alive.
He had heard that they had been taken to Bergen-Belsen, and that at least Bergen-Belsen
was not a death camp.
Otto moved in with Miep and Jan, and together they searched daily for news about Anne
and Margot.
Almost two months later Otto received word that both his daughters had died.
All that time Miep had kept Anne's diaries, hoping to give them back to Anne herself.
As it was now certain that Anne was dead, Miep got out the diaries and gave them to Otto.
Otto started reading them immediately and was moved and astonished. He had never
realized that Anne had recorded everything that happened in the Secret Annex so well and
so accurately. Otto typed large parts of the diary in German and sent them to his mother
in Switzerland. Later he let other people read parts of the diary.
They urged him to look for a publisher, but no one wanted to publish the diary so soon
after the war.
It was only when an article appeared on Anne's diaries in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool
(The Motto) on April 3, 1946, that a publisher was found.
Anne Frank's diary was published in an edition of 1,500 copies in the summer of 1947.
Otto had now fulfilled Anne's wish to become a writer.
The diary was soon translated into French and then into German. In 1951, an English edition
was published. In the years that followed, the diary was translated into thirty-one other
languages. The diary became world-famous.
Throughout the world, streets and schools have been named after Anne Frank.
Anne Frank became a symbol of the six million Jewish men, women, and children who
were murdered by the Nazis in the Second World War.
Otto Frank spent the rest of his life spreading Anne's ideas and ideals. In 1979, one year before his death, he wrote: ''Anne never spoke about hatred anywhere in her diary. She wrote that despite everything, she believed in the goodness of people. And that when the
war was over, she wanted to work for the world and for people.