anne's diary

7/31/2019 Anne's Diary

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Otto Frank

(Father)Margot

(Sister)

Anne

1929 – Frankfurt (Germany), June 13th

.

Pictured here are Anne Frank (1 day old) and

her mother, Edith Frank- Hollander

1931 – In Germany the

hatred against the Jews

was growing stronger.

The Frank family is

Jewish

1933 – Hitler

comes into power.

Jewish people are

in danger. The

Frank family flee to

Holland. They aregoing to live in

Amsterdam.

1935 – Anne with

her friend Sanne in

Amsterdam.

1

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Anne Frank

1939 – Amsterdam, June

12th

, Anne’s birthday. She

is 10 years old.

1940 – There is a war on. The Germans have occupied Holland.

Jewish people in Holland are no longer safe.

1942 – Anne is 13

years old. On her

birthday she is given a

diary, in which she

starts writing on June

14th. One month later

the Frank family go intohiding. It has become

too dangerous.

2



In May of 1940 the Nazis marched on Holland and within a few days the

Dutch underground was all that remained to resist the Nazi war machine.

New regulations were introduced, regulations which were designed to

identify the Jews and restrict their movements. By law, the Jews wereisolated, cut off from the rest of the population. The Nazis were making

mass murder possible. They would eventually kill almost every Jew in

the Netherlands.

Their objective was the eradication of every Jewish person in the world.

By the end of the Second World War they had succeeded in bringingabout the deaths of 6 million Jews. This figure is roughly equivalent to

the entire current population of Inner London.

The entrance to the

Secret Annex is behind

the bookcase which

revolves.

Anne writes on July 8 1942 …

“To go into hiding was

dangerous. Jews in hiding whowere found out or betrayed

were sent to a concentration

camp immediately, and the

penalty for helping people in hiding was death”

3



Anne’s sister had been called up by the Nazis. The Franks knew what

this meant. Margot would be sent to one of the prison camps in Germany

where Jews were starved or gassed to death.

Germany’s Concentration

camp

Mr Frank acted at once. He had already begun converting the annex of

his firm at Prinsengracht 263 into a hiding place. In the first few months

of 1942, household effects were brought over bit by bit. The two upper

floors and the attic of the annex were to be concealed by a hinged

bookcase. On 6th July 1942, he gathered as many of the family’sbelongings he could and took his wife and family to live in the secret

rooms.

Mr Koophius and Mr Kraler, two of Mr Frank’s former employees, were

invaluable to the hideaways, as were the typists Miep and Elly. Theyprovided food bought on the black market or with food stamps obtained

by the underground resistance movement. It was enormously risky and

involved the possible discovery and exposure of the resistance network.

Still it was necessary if the lives of everyone in hiding were to bemaintained.

4



Miep, writing many years after the war had ended, told of a

night which she had spent in the Annex. The extract below

conveys something of the pressures felt by the Franks in the

very early days of their enforced captivity. These pressureswere to grow greater as the months passed.

For some time Anne and the others had been after Henk and me to spend

a night in the hiding place. When I announced to Anne and Mrs Frank

that we would finally sleep upstairs, the enthusiasm was extraordinary.

You would have thought that Queen Wilhelmina herself was about to

make a visit.

During the day I told Jo Koophius of our plan. After work Henk came,

and when the last worker had gone home at five thirty, Mr Koophius bade

us good night. He locked the door of the building behind him, the office

was silent. We made sure the lights had been turned off, and then we

went up the backstairs, pulled open the bookcase, and went in.

“The last worker has gone”, I informed our friends. Right away there

were voices, footsteps, the toilet flushing, a cupboard shutting. The place

had come alive.

Anne directed us towards the bedroom she shared with Margot. At

Anne’s insistence, Henk and I had been allotted their room. Anne and

Margot would sleep in their parent’s room. Anne pulled me to her bed,

neatly made up, and told me she wanted me to put my things there.

Amused, I told her that I’d be honoured and put my things on her bed andHenk’s on Margot’s bed.

Shortly it was time for the radio broadcasts, and the entire group trooped

down to Mr Frank’s old office and gathered round the radio table. The

whole room bristled with excitement when the near-and-yet-so-far-voiceof Radio Orange came through. “Here is Radio Orange. All things went

well today. The English . . . “And on it went, filling us with hope and

information, our only connection with the still free outside world.

5



When it was time to eat, Henk and I were given seats of honour, as we

had been at our anniversary dinner. The food was tasty, and with the

blackout blinds in place and the electric light on, along with the heat from

the cooking, the room became toasty warm. We lingered over coffee and

dessert, talking, our friends devouring the novelty of our presence.

As I sat there I became aware of what it meant to be imprisoned in these

small rooms. I tasted the helpless fear that filled these people day andnight. For all of us it was wartime, but Henk and I had the freedom to

come and go as we pleased. These people were in a prison with locks

inside the doors.

Reluctantly we said good night and went down to the floor below, where

Henk and I got ready for bed in our room surrounded by Anne’s film starfaces on the wall. As I settled into Anne’s hard little bed I could hear

every sound: Mr Van Daan coughing, the squeak of springs, a slipper

dropping beside a bed. The Westerkerk bells rang at fifteen-minuteintervals. I’d never heard them so loud: the sound reverberated through

the room. The church was just across the back gardens from the Annex.

In my office the building blocked the sound. But here, all through thenight I heard each chime. I never slept. I heard a rainstorm begin, the

wind come up. The quietness inside the place was overwhelming. Thefright of these people who were locked up there was so thick, I could feel

it pressing down on me. The terror was so awful it never let me close myeyes.

For the first time I knew what it was like to be a Jew in hiding.

At first light I was still awake. The rain pouring down outside. Quite

early I heard our hosts begin to stir. Each in turn made a trip to the

bathroom, which had to be used before the employees began to arrive

down below.

Henk and I dressed and went upstairs for breakfast. Henk was the first to

leave, as he needed to get out of the building before the workers came in.

I could see by the looks of our friends that they were reluctant to let him

go.

I sat as long as I could. Anne grilled me about my impressions of the

hiding life at night. “How did you sleep? . . . Did the ringing of the bells

keep you awake? . . . Could you hear any planes on their way to bomb

Germany?”

6



I did my best to sidestep her questions, not wanting to betray the fear I

had experienced throughout the night. Anne stared hard at me. It was

unspoken, but we both knew that I had briefly crossed over from outsider

to insider, that I now knew what the long, fright-filled night was like in

the Annex.

“Will you come and stay the night again?” she asked. “You can have my

bed again. It feels safe to have our protectors so close.”

I assured her that we would come again and that we were always close.

“If not nearby in body, then close in spirit.”

“At night too?” Anne asked.

“At night too,” I replied.

This is the room which Miep and Henk spent the night in.

7



The Franks were soon joined by another Jewish family, the Van Daans.

This family consisted of the husband and wife and their teenage son,

Peter. Later a dentist shared their hiding place.

The hideaways tried to lead as normal a life as possible. For Anne,Margot and Peter Van Daan this meant studying and doing homework.

They were not allowed to get behind with their schoolwork. They had to

take endless care, all day, not to be seen or heard for not all the peoplewho worked in the building knew that they were there. At night they

could move around freely but there was still the constant fear of

discovery. Nothing was made easier by the forced intimacy of the twofamilies in conditions which raised tempers and strained nerves.

The imprisonment must have been especially hard for Anne who was anenergetic, spirited girl. There is, however, no bitterness in her diary, not

even against the people who kept her from freedom. Sometimes she

grumbles about her fellow prisoners but usually in a good natured way.She often admits that she herself can be hard to live with.

Anne’s diary tells the whole story of her two years behind the bookcase.We read of the narrow escapes from capture, the bickering, the joys, and

the boredom of the long hours of reading. We find Anne, who first thinksPeter is dull, gradually falling in love with him.

Peter Van Daan arrived at 9.30 in the morning on

August 14th 1942. He was not sixteen yet, rather soft,shy, gawky youth; can’t expect much from his

company. This was Anne’s first impressions.8



On March 14th

1944, Anne wrote in her diary:-

The people from who we obtain food coupons have been caught,

so we just have our five ration cards and no extra coupons, and

no fats. As both Miep and Koophius are ill, Eli hasn’t had time

to do any shopping, so the atmosphere is dreary and dejected,

and so is the food. From tomorrow we shall not have a scrap of fat, butter or margarine left. We can’t have fried potatoes (to

save bread) for breakfast any longer, so we have porridge

instead, and as Mrs Van Daan thinks were starving, we have

bought some full-cream milk ‘under the counter.’ Our supper

today consists of hash made from kale which has been preserved

in a barrel. Hence the precautionary measure with the

handkerchief. It’s incredible how kale can stink when it’s a year

old. The smell in the room is a mixture of bad plums, strong preservatives and rotten eggs.

An example of

a coupon

9



However, the radio broadcasts from England lifted

the spirits of the captives. News was received of

American and British troops landing in France.

On June 6th 1944, Anne wrote:-

Great commotion in the Secret Annex. Would the long-waited

liberation that has been talked of so much, but which still seems

too wonderful, too much like a fairy tale, ever come true?

Would we be granted victory this year, 1944? We don’t know

yet, but hope is revived within us; it gives us fresh courage, and

makes us strong again. Since we must put up bravely with all

the fears, privations and sufferings, the great thing now is to

remain calm and steadfast.

On August 1st 1944, Anne wrote her last diary entry. On August 4th 1944,the blow fell. On that day a truck pulled up outside 263 Prinsengratcht.

The security police headed straight for the bookcase on the third floor.They knew that it concealed the entrance to the Annex. Inside, the

families were alerted by the banging and the shouts of ‘open up!’ Therewas nothing further they could do to resist arrest. They were ordered to

hand over their jewellery and valuables. One official took Mr Frank’s

attaché case, which contained Anne’s notebooks. He shook the contentsout onto the floor, and put in what he wanted to take with him. Anne’s

papers were left behind. The hideaways were forced into the truck, takenfirst to a police station and then to Westernberk, a transit camp in Hollandwhere thousands of Jews were held before being transported to forced

labour or extermination camps. Only one of them returned after the war –

Anne’s father, Otto Frank.

10

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Mrs Frank died of starvation in Auschwitz

Mr Van Daan was gassed

Mrs Van Daan died in Bergen Belsen

Peter was carried off with the SS when the approach of the

Russians forced the Nazis to evacuate Auschwitz, and he was

reported missing.

Mr Dussel died in Neuengamme

In late October Margot and Anne were deported to Germany to the

concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. The camp was packed with

prisoners from other concentration camps. Anne and Margot bothcame down with typhus. They died within a short time of each

other in March 1945.

11



Miep, one of the helpers of the family in hiding, found Anne’s papers

scattered across the floor of the Annex. After the war, when news of

Anne’s death was confirmed, Miep handed the papers over to Anne’s

father.

In the 1980’s Otto Frank gave a rare interview to the BBC’s children’s

programme “Blue Peter”. In it he told how carefully he had considered

the publication of Anne’s private diaries. Indeed he had hesitated about

reading them, but they were all that he had left of his family. He said that

Anne had wanted to be a writer and to live on after her death. These

ambitions, together with the fact that the diaries revealed an ordinary girl,

from an ordinary family, caused to suffer through no fault of her own, ledhim, on friend’s advice, to publish. It was his hope that those who read

her story would realise to what great evil prejudice can lead. Not only

did Anne die - so did millions of others because of it.

The diary was, and still is, a huge success. It has been

printed in 52 languages and is read all over the world,

from Japan to Argentina, from Greenland to Australia.

12



Anne’s view from the attic window, in

the Secret Annex. The attic was her

favourite room.

This is best experienced in the entry for July 15 1944.

It begins:

Dear Kitty,

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they

seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them because inspite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I

simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion,

misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into awilderness. I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us

too. I can feel the suffering of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and peace and tranquillity will return again.

In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.

For Anne the time did not come. However, others like her father have

sought to make things ‘come right’. The Anne Frank Foundation was set

up in 1957. it’s main goal was the preservation of the Secret Annexwhich had become world renowned through the diary. There are many

13



things in the Annex which serve as reminders of the past, for the rooms in

which the hideaways lived are furnished in the same way now as they

were then. However, the Foundation does not want to look at the past. It

wants to continue Anne’s struggle for a better world, one

where discrimination of any kind will be stopped.

To this end, exhibitions are sent out from the house, and the rooms at the

front of it are used for courses and seminars to raise awareness of the

dangers of prejudice and discrimination. They do more than this.However, in 1993 for example, they received the letter printed below.

They immediately sent out an URGENT MEMO containing the letter

and launching an appeal.

Anne’s

vision

inspired

others in

ways she

could

never

haveimagined

in her

lifetime.

14



“If she had been your neighbour

would you have saved her?”

EXHIBITION1 - 29 OCTOBER 1990

WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL

“First, they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out- -

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out- -Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade

Unionists and I did not speak out - -Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for me - -And there was no one left

To speak out for me”

These words were written by Pastor Niemoller, a victim of the

Nazis. They show what it was like in Nazi Germany.

15



16



17



Background Material

World War One (1914 – 18) ended for Germany in total defeat. The German people

were dissatisfied: the peace treaty was a great humiliation. There was no money, no

work and no hope of a better future. In the chaotic twenties an unknown young man

from Austria had managed to work his way up to the position of leader (Fuhrer) of an

insignificant party in Munich. His name was Adolf Hitler; the party called itself the

NSDAP and its followers were called Nazis.

After an unsuccessful coup d’etat, Hitler was put in a comfortable prison, where he

wrote down his plans and ideas in a book entitled ‘Mein Kampf’ (my struggle). He

said that the German people were ‘Aryans’ and that the ‘Aryan race’ was the strongestand the best. All other races were inferior. The most inferior ‘race’ in his eyes was

the Jewish people. He blamed them for everything that was wrong and for all

Germany’s defeats. Hitler’s ideas appealed to many in Germany. The NSDAP soon

became a party to be reckoned with.

In 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor and quickly, within a year, he consolidated

all power within his grasp. The concentration camps filled up steadily from then on,

first with political opponents, particularly communists and trade union leaders, but

soon with Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, in brief everyone who disagreed with him or

whom he regarded as inferior.

All of life in Germany from 1933 on was oriented towards preparation for war. Few,

however, realised this. In September of 1939 World War 11 began with the invasion

of Poland. Between then and 1945 this war was to cost nearly 55 million people their

lives, among 6 million Jews, most of whom were killed in the concentration camps.

In May 1940 the Netherlands were occupied and, in spite of no end of promises, the

German system was introduced here as well. The economy was entirely orientated

towards Germany and many Dutch men had to go and work like slaves in German

factories.

In February 1941 the persecution of the Netherlands, 140 000 Jews began. Twenty

Five thousand of these Jews were refugees from Germany, like the Frank family. No

more than a few of them managed to go into hiding and thus escape the concentration

camps and the gas chambers. Three out of every four Dutch Jews did not survive the

war.

The occupation of Holland meant five years of repression, slave labour, terror, hunger

and fear. Unhappily it also meant collaboration, but fortunately there was resistance

as well. In any case it meant the loss of an enormous number of innocent people.

Anne Frank was one of them.

Material from: The Anne Frank House, Amsterdam.

18



A Cartload of Shoes

The wheels hurry onward,onward.

What do they carry?

They carry a cartloadOf shivering shoes.

The wagon like a canopyin the evening light;

the shoes – clustered

Like people in a dance.

A wedding, a holiday?

Has something blinded my eyes?The shoes – I seem

To recognize them.

The heels go tapping

With a clatter and a din.

From our old Vilna streets

They drive us to Berlin.

I should not ask

But something tears at my tongue

Shoes, tell me the truth

Where are they, the feet?

The feet from those boots

With buttons like dew –

And here, where is the bodyAnd there, where is the bride?

Where is the childTo fill those shoes

Why has the bride

Gone barefoot?

Through the slippers and the

bootsI see those my mother used to

wear

She kept them from the Sabbath

Her favourite pair.

And the heels go tapping:

With a clatter and a din,

From our old Vilna streets

They drive us to Berlin.

Abraham Sutzkever (Translated by David G. Roskies)

19



The picture is of a YAHRZEIT CANDLE. This candle belongs to the Jewish

tradition. It is burned on the anniversary of a death. On that day the dead

person is remembered and spoken about in a special way.

Six such candles are burned in a North London synagogue on Remembrance

Sunday – five for the five million adults who died and one for the one million.

20



WORK EITHER ON YOUR OWN OR WITH A FRIEND

Written Work

1. Look up the words Prejudice and Discriminate in the dictionary.

Write down both words and their meanings.

2.a Write down how the Anne Frank Foundation try to prevent such things as

prejudice and discrimination happening?

b. Write down why you think they do this work?

c. Write down an example of prejudice from your own life.

3. Read carefully Anne’s statement about her Vision of the future (“it’s

really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals…”) on page 13.

Anne believed that there was a better world.

Write down:

a. What kind of world Anne wanted.

b. Why she believed that one day her dream would come true?

c. What she did to help make her dream come true?

d. The words which describe her vision (dream).

4. Have you ever heard the old saying that “Prevention is better than cure?”

What do you think this means? (Discuss with your friend or the teacher if

you do not know).

Write down:

a. The saying and its meaning. b. What do you think is the link between this saying and the people who

opposed the Nazis?

5. Write your own letter or diary entry to Anne, include the following:

Your response to her “Vision” Your feelings about her life in the annex. Something you would like her to know about yourself.

6. If you were to create a symbol which would stand for Anne and her

vision, what would it be?Draw it if you can.

1



ACTIVITIES IN PAIRSReflecting

Discussion work with a friend

1. Look carefully at the diagram of Anne Frank’s House in

Amsterdam, Holland on page 16, and read the additionalinformation on page 17.

Identify and talk about all the different rooms.

2. Read Miep’s account of the night which she spent with the Franks

in the annex on pages 5, 6 and 7.

Talk about whether or not you would have felt the same as Miep.

3. Anne kept a diary from her thirteenth birthday until she was

captured two years later. Read some of her diary on page 13.

Talk about why you think she begins, ‘Dear Kitty’ and not ‘Dear

Anne’.

4. Read the extract from her diary which is printed below:

Believe me, if you had been shut up for a year and a half, it

can get too much for you some days. In spite of all justice

and thankfulness, you can’t crush your feelings. Cycling,

dancing, whistling, looking out into the world, feeling

young, to know that I’m free – that’s what I long for; still I

mustn’t show it, because I sometimes think if all eight of us

began to pity ourselves, or went around with discontented

faces, where would it lead us?

(Anne, writing in her diary, 24th

December 1943)

Talk about whether or not you would have coped with life in the

Secret Annex in the same ways that she did.

5. Look at the poster on page 15 advertising the Anne Frank

Exhibition in Winchester, then read the poem on page 15 by Pastor

Niemoller.Talk about the connection.

anne's diary

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