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N0KFQ > TODAY 04.08.11 17:40l 88 Lines 4354 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Aug 4
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Sent: 110804/1515Z 10610@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.0.4
Aug 4, 1944:
Anne Frank captured
Acting on tip from a Dutch informer, the Nazi Gestapo captures
15-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family in a
sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. The Franks had taken
shelter there in 1942 out of fear of deportation to a Nazi
concentration camp. They occupied the small space with another
Jewish family and a single Jewish man, and were aided by
Christian friends, who brought them food and supplies. Anne spent
much of her time in the "secret annex" working on her diary. The
diary survived the war, overlooked by the Gestapo that discovered
the hiding place, but Anne and nearly all of the others perished
in the Nazi death camps.
Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on
June 12, 1929. She was the second daughter of Otto Frank and
Edith Frank-Hollander, both of Jewish families that had lived in
Germany for centuries. With the rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler
in 1933, Otto moved his family to Amsterdam to escape the
escalating Nazi persecution of Jews. In Holland, he ran a
successful spice and jam business. Anne attended a Montessori
school with other middle-class Dutch children, but with the
German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 she was forced to
transfer to a Jewish school. In 1942, Otto began arranging a
hiding place in an annex of his warehouse on the Prinsengracht
Canal in Amsterdam.
On her 13th birthday in 1942, Anne began a diary relating her
everyday experiences, her relationship with her family and
friends, and observations about the increasingly dangerous world
around her. Less than a month later, Anne's older sister, Margot,
received a call-up notice to report to a Nazi "work camp."
Fearing deportation to a Nazi concentration camp, the Frank
family took shelter in the secret annex the next day. One week
later, they were joined by Otto Frank's business partner and his
family. In November, a Jewish dentist_the eighth occupant of the
hiding place_joined the group.
For two years, Anne kept a diary about her life in hiding that is
marked with poignancy, humor, and insight. The entrance to the
secret annex was hidden by a hinged bookcase, and former
employees of Otto and other Dutch friends delivered them food and
supplies procured at high risk. Anne and the others lived in
rooms with blacked-out windows, and never flushed the toilet
during the day out of fear that their presence would be detected.
In June 1944, Anne's spirits were raised by the Allied landing at
Normandy, and she was hopeful that the long-awaited liberation of
Holland would soon begin.
On August 1, 1944, Anne made her last entry in her diary. Three
days later, 25 months of seclusion ended with the arrival of the
Nazi Gestapo. Anne and the others had been given away by an
unknown informer, and they were arrested along with two of the
Christians who had helped shelter them. They were sent to a
concentration camp in Holland, and in September Anne and most of
the others were shipped to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. In
the fall of 1944, with the Soviet liberation of Poland underway,
Anne was moved with her sister Margot to the Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp in Germany. Suffering under the deplorable
conditions of the camp, the two sisters caught typhus and died in
early March 1945. The camp was liberated by the British less than
two months later.
Otto Frank was the only one of the 10 to survive the Nazi death
camps. After the war, he returned to Amsterdam via Russia, and
was reunited with Miep Gies, one of his former employees who had
helped shelter him. She handed him Anne's diary, which she had
found undisturbed after the Nazi raid. In 1947, Anne's diary was
published by Otto in its original Dutch as Diary of a Young Girl.
An instant best-seller and eventually translated into more than
50 languages, The Diary of Anne Frank has served as a literary
testament to the nearly six million Jews, including Anne herself,
who were silenced in the Holocaust.
The Frank family's hideaway at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam
opened as a museum in 1960. A new English translation of Anne's
diary in 1995 restored material that had been edited out of the
original version, making the work nearly a third longer.
73, K.O. n0kfq
Another old retired guy
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
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