- Frank, Anne
- (1929–1944)The efforts of Dutch Jews to escape deportation to the death camps included a number of Jews who went into hiding. The best-known example of “diving under,” as the expression was used to describe those who hid from the Germans, was the Frank family. Anne Frank and her family went into hiding on 9 July 1942 but not before Otto Frank, her father, had planned the move. Having few illusions about the Nazis, Otto Frank, who had emigrated to the Netherlands from Germany, began the preparations almost immediately after the German occupation of the country. In an incremental but methodical manner, the Franks moved their possessions to the vacant annex located at the top of a house on Prinsengracht 263.They remained there until 4 August 1944, when the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in Amsterdam received an anonymous phone call that disclosed the Franks’ hiding place. When the police arrived and arrested the Franks, they also searched for money and jewelry. In the process of searching for valuables, a policeman inadvertently emptied an attache case that contained Anne Frank’s diary. After the police departed, Miep Gies, one of Otto Frank’s employees, returned to the annex and found the diary, which has since become a classic in the literature of the Holocaust.The Franks were sent to the Westerbork camp and then deported to Auschwitz, where Anne’s mother, Edith, perished. Anne and her sister Margot were sent to Bergen-Belsen at the end of October 1944, where both died of typhus. Otto Frank was the only surviving member of the family.
Historical dictionary of the Holocaust. Jack R. Fischel. 2014.