In the aftermath of the raid, Miep Gies, who had been the Frank family’s main link to the outside world, gathered papers left strewn on the floor of the annex. A life cut shortīut her work was cut short on the morning of August 4, 1944, when Dutch police and German officers raided the secret annex and arrested Anne and the rest of the hiding Jews. She called it Het Achterhuis, “the house behind,” and assigned the annex’s residents and helpers pseudonyms. “Ten years after the war, people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding,” she wrote. In response, she began editing her diary for publication. In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast in which a Dutch official in exile urged people to save historical materials related to the occupation and war. She felt like “a songbird who has had his wings clipped and who is hurling himself in utter darkness against the bars of his cage,” she wrote in October 1943.Īnne had big aspirations for her account of daily life in World War II. Photo via Ullstein Bild/Getty ImagesĪs the days dragged on and the pressure of war and life in hiding became nearly unbearable, the diary became Anne’s mainstay. About 42 percent were ultimately caught and arrested due to Nazi tactics that coerced citizens to betray those in hiding. The Franks were among the 28,000 Dutch Jews who went into hiding during World War II. Right: The Frank family hid in what Anne dubbed the secret annex, pictured here, from July 1942 until their capture in August 1944. Addressed to a fictional friend, Kitty, and written in Dutch, the diary was an outlet for everything from her complaints about her mother to her feelings about sexuality, human nature, and politics. Many of the details of life in the secret annex are only known due to Anne’s faithful documentation in her diary, which she received for her 12th birthday a month before going into hiding. They were completely dependent on a small group of helpers, who bought them food on the black market and provided them with supplies and support at great personal risk.

After dark, they huddled around a contraband radio and listened to news of the war. Hiding in the center of a bustling metropolis, the annex’s residents had to remain nearly noiseless during the day and withstand air raids at night. The secret annex’s seven residents would not go outside for more than two years.

In July 1942, Anne, her parents, and her sister, Margot, moved into the cramped two-story apartment Anne would call “the secret annex.” They were joined by family friends Auguste and Hermann van Pels their son, Peter and Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist. With the help of his gentile friends and colleagues, Otto arranged for his family to hide in living quarters behind Opekta’s offices. But when an attempt to gain a visa to the United States failed, and Nazis began to arrest his Jewish friends and take them to concentration camps, he decided his family should go into hiding. He managed to evade a law banning Jews from owning businesses by putting his company, Opekta, which sold pectin for home cooks, in the hands of sympathetic colleagues. Their bicycles, radios, and other items were confiscated and given to gentiles.Īfter the invasion, Anne’s father, Otto Frank, became increasingly concerned for his family. Among other laws, Jews were not allowed to use public transportation, practice various professions, or attend the same schools as non-Jews. Five days later, the Dutch government fled, and the country surrendered to the Nazis, who swiftly took over the nation’s civil institutions and began to impose the same restrictions on Jews that they had instituted in Germany. In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. ( Learn about Anne Frank's life with your kids.)īut the Franks-and all Jews-weren’t safe in the Netherlands, either.

The Frank family was among the 25,000 Jews who had fled Germany for the Netherlands due to the Nazis’ growing persecution. Unauthorized use is prohibited.īorn in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1929, Anneliese Marie Frank moved to the Netherlands with her family in 1934 in the aftermath of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

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