Anne Schraff

[1] On June 6, 1944, the Allied forces landed at Normandy in the invasion named D-Day.Anne and the others in the annex were excited to hear about it.It seemed that their ordeal would soon be over.In fact, the southern part of the Netherlands was already liberated.The northern part still remained under Nazi occupation.

[2] On June 12, 1944, six days after the Normandy invasion, Anne Frank turned 15.She and her family had been in hiding now for almost two years.Anne Frank wrote in her diary about how terrible she thought war was.She wondered on the pages of her diary why people could not live peacefully together.She felt optimistic about the future and about her relationship with Peter Van Pels.She wrote that she loved him and he loved her.Anne believed that liberation was near.Yet, she wondered if that was too wonderful to be true.After living for so long in the secret annex, freedom seemed like a fairy tale.

[3] Anne’s feelings for Peter had their ups and downs.Sometimes she was disappointed in him because he did not talk very much.Anne felt confused.She wrote in her diary that it was so hard to be young and unsure of yourself under such terrible circumstances.She wrote about what she believed in and the high ideal she held.On July 15, 1944, Anne Frank wrote that in spite of all the misery, death, and destruction, she still believed in the goodness of the human heart.

[4] Anne Frank wrote in her diary for the last time on August 1, 1944.She wrote how it troubled her that people did not really know her.They thought she was light and shallow because they did not know her better, deeper self.

[5] On August 4, the weather was very hot and life was going on as usual in the secret annex.Anne’s father, Otto Frank was about to give Peter a lesson in English.It was ten-thirty.When Otto Frank entered the boy’s room, they both heard scary noises from downstairs.They heard the voices of strangers.The men sounded angry and hostile.Otto Frank and Peter shared a look of terror.The secret annex had been betrayed.

[6] Five men burst into the office building.One of them was a German police officer, Karl Silberbauer.The other four men were Dutch Nazis in civilian clothing.They first came upon Miep, Bep, Johannes Kleiman, and Victor Kugler who were all in the office.The five Nazis knew all about the eight people who hid upstairs.Whoever had betrayed them told the entire story.It was no use for the four helpers to deny everything.

[7] Victor Kugler was ordered to take them upstairs and roll the bookcase aside.The five men drew their revolvers in preparation as the door to the secret annex was opened.The Franks, Van Pelses and Pfeffer were all taken downstairs with their hands in the air.The Nazis walked behind them with their drawn pistols.

[8] Karl Silberbauer demanded to know where the valuables were kept.He took a small amount of money and jewelry, then he dumped Anne’s briefcase onto the floor.Her diary and the loose pages sprayed across the floor.One of the Nazis stared at a gray foot locker belonging to Otto Frank.It was a World War I soldier’s uniform.It had been used by Lt.Otto Frank of the German army.

[9] The eight from the secret annex and their helpers were questioned.Finally, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested with those who had been hiding.The ten prisoners were loaded into a windowless police truck.They were driven from 263 Prinsengracht to a former school now used by the Nazis.The eight spent the night in basement cells.The following day, they were all taken to a regular prison on the Weteringschans in the center of the city.For ten days, Anne and the others lived in crowded, filthy conditions.Witnesses who noticed the Franks described a very worried Otto Frank and his nervous wife.Anne and Margot wore backpacks.

[10] The next stop was Westerbork, eighty miles from Amsterdam.The Franks traveled in a regular train but the doors were bolted shut.Otto Frank still had hope.Perhaps, he thought, he and his family would remain at Westerbork.Maybe they would not be deported to the death camps of Poland.

[11] The Franks were registered at the camp.They all showed quiet dignity.The Franks were assigned to the punishment block.There they were forced to wear uniforms and clogs.Because they had not turned themselves in and had to be captured in hiding, they were treated worse.Otto Frank had his head shaved.Edith and the girls had their hair cut painfully short.At the punishment block, there was less food, and the work was harder.Otto Frank was assigned to the battery shed where old batteries were chopped up.It was difficult, dirty work.Anne’s father tried to save Anne from this work.He got her a job helping another woman cleaning toilets.The men and women slept in different barracks.But once, when Anne was sick, her father came to stand beside her bed for hours telling her stories.

[12] Anne and Margot clung together during their time at Westerbork.Everybody hoped against hope that they would not be deported to the death camps.But on September 2, 1944, the names were announced for the next deportation.The Franks, the Van Pelses, and Pfeffer were included.

[13] For three days and two nights, the train from Westerbork traveled through the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland.The people were held in cattle cars with no ventilation except what might slip through a crack in the wood.There were no sanitary facilities.Some died on the terrible journey.The smell of human waste and death was almost unbearable.The trains were hot, and they rocked violently in the wind.Anne and her family were jammed in with sixty people.Finally, the train stopped.The half-dead people stumbled out and were beaten by SS men who stood guard along the tracks.Anne Frank and her family had arrived at Auschwitz, twenty-five square miles of gas chambers, crematoriums, and horror.

[14] Immediately, the men and women were separated.Those to be gassed at once were selected.Anyone over fifty or under fifteen would be gassed along with the sick and disabled.The others were to be put to work.Otto Frank turned and looked at his wife and daughters for the last time on the night of September 5, 1944.Although Otto Frank was fifty-five, he looked younger.For that reason, he was not killed immediately.

[15] The women chosen for the work chores had to walk to the women’s camp at Birkenau.Edith Frank and her two daughters stayed together.In October 1944 Edith Frank stayed at Birkenau.But Anne and Margot were sent to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.It was bitterly cold.The women there were starving and getting sick with deadly diseases.Anne and Margot huddled together in an icy-cold, unheated barracks.Someone who recognized them said the girls looked like frozen little birds.A school friend of Anne’s spoke to her once.Anne wept because she believed that both of her parents were dead.Anne was trembling.She was wrapped in one thin blanket.

[16] Typhus swept through Bergen-Belsen in the spring of 1945.Witnesses told of seeing both Anne and Margot Frank deathly sick from the disease.The guards had cut off water to the camp.This made sanitation impossible.A witness found Anne and Margot lying side by side on the same cot.She encouraged the girls to get help.But Anne said that at least they were together and would die in peace with each other.In March, Margot fell to the floor while trying to rise from her bunk.She died of shock.A few days later, Anne Frank died as well.The bodies of the girls were taken to the mass graves at the camp and buried.

[17] Three weeks later, in April 1945, British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen.Of the eight people who hid in the secret annex, all but Otto Frank died.Of the helpers, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were imprisoned, but they survived.

[18] On the day when the annex was betrayed, Miep found Anne’s diary.She gathered it up along with the loose pages Anne had written on.Miep hoped at the time that she could give them back to Anne when she was liberated.On January 27, 1945, when the Russian army liberated Auschwitz, Otto Frank was still alive.He heard that his wife was dead.He had no idea what happened to Anne and Margot.Otto Frank moved in with Miep and Jan Gies.He began an agonizing search for his daughters.Two months later, Otto Frank learned that Anne and Margot had died at Bergen-Belsen.Immediately, Miep gave him the diaries she had saved from the secret annex.Otto Frank was amazed that his daughter had written so much.He was also touched by the quality of the writing.

[19] He shared the diaries with others.They encouraged him to have the work published.In April 1946, Anne Frank’s diary was first published.Anne’s dream of becoming a writer had come true.In the years that followed, Anne Frank’s diary was published all over the world.It was translated into many languages.Millions of copies were sold.Plays and films based on the life of Anne Frank have been performed throughout the world.

[20] Otto Frank spent the rest of his life spreading the ideals of his daughter.In her diary, she never talked about hating anybody.She hoped her life could be spent making the world a better place.Frank considered it his duty to fulfill his daughter’s dreams.Anne Frank has become a symbol of anyone who is persecuted because of their race, color, or creed anywhere in the world.

[21] Visitors today can go to 263 Prinsengracht to view the secret annex and original pages of Anne Frank’s diaries.Each year, over 600,000 people come to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.Although Anne Frank lived for just fifteen years and some nine months, she has had a great impact on the world.Her spirit and courage is a reproach to anyone who would promote bigotry or hatred.

Notes

1.Text C is an abridged part from the book Saddleback 20th Century Biographies —Anne Frank, written by Anne Schraff.

2. D-Day: 6th, June, 1944; in WWⅡ.It was the day the Allies landed in France to begin the spread of their forces through Europe.

For Fun

Works to Read

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

The book describes the German soldiers’ extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.

2. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

It is a book of the writings from the diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Movies to See

1. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

It is an American war film based on the Erich Maria Remarque novel of the same name and is considered a realistic and harrowing account of warfare in World War I.

2. Schindler’s List (1993)

It is Steven Spielberg’s award-winning masterpiece, about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories.

3. Life Is Beautiful (1997)

It is an Italian film which tells the story of a Jewish Italian, Guido Orefice, who must employ his fertile imagination to help his family during their internment in a Nazi concentration camp.