# data[].attributes.body
Medailónek

# data[].attributes.body
Závěrečné ohlédnutí

# data[].attributes.body
Medailónek

# data[].attributes.body
Medailonek

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Take a look around and explore the Secret Annex where Anne Frank was in hiding for more than two years during World War II, and where she wrote her diary.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Fritz Pfeffer had a flourishing dental practice in Berlin. He was divorced and lived there with his son, Werner (6 years old). Fritz was a strict father, who valued discipline. He observed the Jewish holidays and adhered to the religious precepts.

After his divorce, Fritz became involved with Charlotte Kaletta, who was a Catholic. Charlotte recounted: 'We lived in Berlin. My husband was Jewish; I am a Catholic. We would speak about the matter when speaking made us feel better, and we would say nothing about it when silence made us feel better.' ﻿

Escape to Amsterdam

After the Kristallnacht, Fritz and Charlotte decided to flee Nazi Germany and go to the Netherlands. Fritz succeeded in putting his son Werner on a boat to England with a 'Kindertransport'. His brother Ernst took care of the child there.

In 1940, Fritz got to know Otto Frank in Amsterdam and became part of the circle of friends and acquaintances - including Mr and Mrs Van Pels and Jan and Miep Gies - who visited the Frank family on Saturday afternoons.

The eighth resident of the Secret Annex

As the raids increased and more and more Jews were arrested, Fritz wanted to go into hiding as well. He asked Miep Gies if she happened to know of a place. Together, the helpers and the people hiding in the Secret Annex decided that they had room for one more. '.Great news, an 8th person is going to hide with us!!..,' Anne wrote in her diary on 10 November 1942.

Fritz Pfeffer went from one surprise to the next when he arrived at Prinsengracht 263 a week later. First when he realised that the Secret Annex was hidden within the company and then upon meeting the Frank and Van Pels families there. He had assumed that the Frank family had escaped to Switzerland.

'He does spend a quarter of an hour (...) rocking from his toes to his heels.'

Arguments and friction

Fritz moved in with Anne, and Margot moved to her parents' room. Fritz noticed that there were frictions between the families in the Secret Annex and, according to Anne, tried to mediate between the quarrelling parties, but soon gave up.

It was not easy to share the room. In her diary Anne described how Fritz would say his prayers on Sundays: 'he does spend a quarter of an hour - an entire fifteen minutes - rocking from his toes to his heels. Back and forth, back and forth. It goes on forever, and if I don't shut my eyes tight, my head starts to spin.' ﻿

Before long, Anne was terribly annoyed by Fritz. He often commented on her behaviour and passed everything on to her mother. Fritz, on the other hand, will frequently have been annoyed by Anne, too.

Dreaming of South America

Thanks to Miep Gies, Fritz and Charlotte were able to stay in touch. Miep regularly took parcels and letters from Fritz to Charlotte and vice versa. During the war, Charlotte lived in Amsterdam and had no idea that Fritz's hiding place was not far from where she lived.

Fritz spent a lot of time on his letters to Charlotte, which unfortunately have not been saved. In addition, he focused on learning the Spanish language. He dreamt of building a new life with Charlotte in South America after the war.

'What is this fellow doing lying on my heart? He's not my sweetheart, is he?'

Dentist and doctor in the Secret Annex

The people in hiding were lucky to have a dentist in the house. Fritz had brought his bag with instruments and a dentist's drill to the Secret Annex. He treated Anne in June 1944. 'I am having some really horrible nerve-treatment and in one of my front tooth too, it's been hurting me dreadfully and was so bad that Pf. thought I was going to faint.' ﻿

As Fritz has also studied medicine, he examined Anne when she had the flu. Anne was less than enthusiastic, to put it mildly. 'The worst moment of all was certainly when Mr. Pf. thought he'd play doctor, and came and lay on my naked chest with his greasy head, in order to listen to the sounds within. (...) What is this fellow doing lying on my heart? He's not my sweetheart, is he?' ﻿

Hard labour in the Neuengamme concentration camp

After the arrest of the people hiding in the Secret Annex, Fritz Pfeffer and the others were sent to the Westerbork transit camp and on to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.

On the Auschwitz-Birkenau platform, Nazi doctors placed Fritz with the prisoners who had to do hard labour. Presumably, Fritz had to build roads outside the camp together with other prisoners. At the beginning of November 1944, he had to leave Auschwitz.

It is unclear how and when Fritz Pfeffer ended up in the Neuengamme concentration camp. It is, however, certain that the prisoners in Neuengamme had to do hard labour under appalling conditions.

According to the camp records, Fritz Pfeffer died on 20 December 1944; the cause of death listed was 'enterocolitis', a gastrointestinal infection.

References

1. Schnabel, Ernst, The footsteps of Anne Frank (London etc.: Longmans, Green and Co, 1959), p. 42.

2. Frank, Anne, "Sundays," short story, 20 February 1944. In: Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex (London: Halban, 2010), p. 45.

3. Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation [NIOD], The Diary of Anne Frank: the revised critical edition (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2003), A-version, 30 June 1944.

4. NIOD, The Diary of Anne Frank, B-version, 22 December 1943.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Fritz Pfeffer had a flourishing dental practice in Berlin. He was divorced and lived there with his son, Werner (6 years old). Fritz was a strict father, who valued discipline. He observed the Jewish holidays and adhered to the religious precepts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Edith Frank was Anne Frank's mother and one of the eight people in hiding in the Secret Annex. Read her biography here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Auguste Röttgen married Hermann van Pels in 1925. Through her marriage, she acquired Dutch nationality. The couple settled in the German city of Osnabrück, where Hermann's family lived. In November 1926, Peter was born their first and only child.

Auguste and Hermann were deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism. They no longer saw a future in Nazi Germany and in 1937 decided to move to the Netherlands.

In Amsterdam, they found a house in the same neighbourhood as the Franks. It is unclear how the two families met. However, we do know that Hermann joined Otto Frank's company as a herbalist. Auguste ran the household. She also took care of their boarders they had taken in to earn some extra money.

"Without a chamber pot, I cannot feel at home"

Auguste the 'kitchen princess'

In early 1942, Otto Frank and Hermann van Pels prepared a hiding place in an empty section of the business premises. There was enough room for both their families. A week after the Frank family had moved in, the Van Pels family joined them in the Secret Annex. Anne had a good laugh at their arrival, because Auguste had carried her chamber pot in a hatbox. '"Without a chamber pot, I cannot feel at home,' she said, according to Anne. ﻿

Anne considered Auguste the 'busy housewife' of the Secret Annex. She usually cooked and tried her best to prepare tasty meals - no easy feat in times of scarcity. Anne wrote that Auguste was tired of 'the job of kitchen princess' ﻿ , but that she stuck with it, just to have something to do. In addition, she learned English and Dutch and liked to read biographies and novels.

Terrible rows

Anne's diary gives the impression that Auguste and her husband Hermann frequently quarreled, but were always quick to reconcile. One of these rows occurred when Hermann forced Auguste to sell her fur coat to finance the hiding.

Anne: 'That shrieking, screaming, stamping of feet and scolding was something you can't imagine. It was frightening. My family stood breathless at the bottom of the stairs, ready to rush up and pull the combatants apart if necessary.' Soon after, according to Anne, the 'reconciliation period of "Oh darling Putti" and "my cute Kerli" set in.' ﻿ Auguste and Hermann had nicknames for each other: she called him 'Putti', he called her 'Kerli'.

"The Frank family, the mother, the two daughters, and Mrs Van Pels formed a unit that automatically belonged together."

A unit within the camp

On 4 August 1944, the period in hiding ended when they were all arrested. After prison, Auguste and the others were transferred to the Westerbork transit camp. There are no testimonies about her imprisonment there.

However, Auguste's name is on the transport list of 3 September 1944. Together with Hermann and Peter, she spent three days in a cramped cattle car. On the Auschwitz-Birkenau platform, she had to say goodbye to her husband and son. We do not know whether she was aware of their fate.

In the concentration camp, Auguste was supported by Edith, Margot, and Anne.

To Bergen-Belsen with Margot and Anne

In the night of 1 November, Auguste was transported from Auschwitz-Birkenau to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, together with Anne and Margot. As Bergen-Belsen was overcrowded, the camp command had erected tents. When these were blown down during a fierce storm, the women ended up in an overcrowded barracks with several hundred others.

In February 1945, the month in which Margot and Anne died, Auguste van Pels was put on another transport. She ended up in Raguhn, a satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. A few weeks later she had to leave again: Auguste was put on a transport to Theresienstadt.

Auguste's death

We do not know exactly how Auguste died. Two witnesses stated that she died during the transport from Raguhn to Theresienstadt. One of them was Annelore Beem-Daniel, who had met Auguste van Pels in the barracks in Bergen-Belsen. After the war, she said that Auguste - just like Anne and Margot - had contracted typhus and had died right next to her during the transport. Together with someone else, she had lifted Auguste off the train and placed her by the side of the tracks.

The testimony given by Rachel van Amerongen, the other witness, is even more gruesome. On 28 September 1945, she said in her statement to the Red Cross: 'During the journey from Raguhn to Theresienstadt, the Germans threw under the train and killed: Mrs Gusti van Pels-Röttgen, circa 42 years old'. No other witnesses were found to corroborate this version of events.

References

1. Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation [NIOD], The Diary of Anne Frank: the critical edition (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1989), B-version, 14 August 1942.

2. NIOD, The Diary of Anne Frank, B-version, 14 March 1944.

3. NIOD, The Diary of Anne Frank, B-version, 29 October 1943.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Auguste Röttgen married Hermann van Pels in 1925. Through her marriage, she acquired Dutch nationality. The couple settled in the German city of Osnabrück, where Hermann's family lived. In November 1926, Peter was born their first and only child. Auguste and Hermann were deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Otto Frank was the second son of Michael Frank and Alice Betty Stern. The family lived in Germany and were liberal Jews. They valued Jewish traditions and holidays but did not observe all religious laws.

Father Michael Frank was the proud owner of a business bank in Frankfurt am Main. After high school, Otto briefly studied art history in Heidelberg. He then went on to do traineeships at various banks and at Macy's (New York).

Otto returned to Germany after his father's sudden death in 1909. He spent some time at a company that produced horseshoes. The First World War initially seemed to pass Otto by, but he enlisted in 1915. He was part of a 'Lichtmesstrupp', a unit that analysed where enemy artillery fire came from.

When the war ended, Otto had been promoted to lieutenant and was decorated. After his return, he joined the family bank.

Leaving Germany

At the age of 36, Otto married Edith Holländer. The couple settled in Frankfurt am Main and had two daughters, Margot (1926) and Anne (1929). They had a good life, although they worried about the future. Germany was in crisis. The country had been hit hard by the global economic crisis of 1929 and many people lived in dire poverty. Hitler and his party took advantage of the feelings of dissatisfaction, and their support increased.

'After the experiences in Nazi Germany, we could live our own life in the Netherlands. We were able to make a fresh start and feel free.'

A new start in Amsterdam

In early 1933, Otto and Edith took the plunge. They decide to leave Nazi Germany because of their business problems and the growing antisemitism of Hitler and his followers.

In the Netherlands, Otto worked hard to get his company going and build a new life for his family. Meanwhile, the developments in Nazi Germany continued to give cause for concern. From 1937 onwards, Otto looked into options for setting up a business in Great Britain, but the plans never worked out.

Things looked better financially when Otto started selling spices and herbs in addition to the pectin in 1938. The second company was named Pectacon. Hermann van Pels joined the company and took on part of the work.

The feeling of freedom came to an abrupt end when the German army invaded the Netherlands in May of 1940.

Emigration is not an option

From 15 May 1940 onwards, the Netherlands was occupied territory. The Nazis kept introducing new anti-Semitic measures. It doesn't take long for them to rule that Jews were not allowed to have their own companies. With the help of his employees and Jan Gies (Miep's husband), Otto succeeded in keeping his companies out of Nazi hands.

In the course of 1941, the situation got worse: Jewish men were arrested during raids and taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Among them were friends and acquaintances of Otto's. After a while, reports of their deaths started coming in.

Otto made every effort to emigrate to the US with the help of a former fellow student in order to escape the persecution of the Jews. But he never managed to get all the necessary documents together, and the option ran out when the US got involved in the war. At that point, all borders were closed.

A hiding place

In the spring of 1942, Otto decided to set up a hiding place in an empty part of his business premises. If necessary, there would be enough room for his own family and for the family of his employee Hermann van Pels, seven people in all. Otto asked four of his closest employees to take care of him and his family if they would have to go into hiding. All of them agreed.

The hiding place was not quite ready when Margot received a call-up on 5 July 1942 to report to a labour camp in Nazi Germany. Still, Otto and Edith did not hesitate for a moment: the next morning, they left for Prinsengracht 263 with Margot and Anne.

The Secret Annex

From 6 July 1942 onwards, Otto was in hiding in the company building on the Prinsengracht . The Van Pels family followed one week later, and in November 1942, they were joined by Fritz Pfeffer, the eighth person in hiding.

Anne's diary tells us that Otto continued to be concerned with the ins and outs of the company. Whenever business relations from Frankfurt visited, he would lie down in the hiding place with his ear to the floor in order to hear what was being discussed in the office below.

Whenever he was not busy with the companies, Otto loved to read Charles Dickens, with a dictionary at hand, according to Anne. Anne: "A little Latin, never reads novels but likes serious and dry-as-dust descriptions of people and countries." ﻿

'We had not foreseen how many problems would arise because of the differences in characters and views.'

Otto, the peacemaker

Otto felt responsible for the atmosphere in the Secret Annex and mediated in the countless larger and smaller arguments. 'We had thought that living with my partner's family in our hiding place would make life less monotonous, but we had not foreseen how many problems would arise because of the differences in characters and views.' ﻿

In her diary, Anne wrote: 'I am dazed by all the abusive exchanges that have hurtled through this virtuous house during the past month. Daddy goes about with his lips tightly pursed, when anyone speaks to him, he looks up startled, as is he is afraid he will have to patch up some tricky relationship again. (...) Quite honestly, I sometimes forget who we are quarreling with and with whom we've made it up.' ﻿

Miep Gies remembered Otto in the Secret Annex as 'the calm one, the children's teacher, the most logical, the one who balanced everyone out. He was the leader, the one in charge.' ﻿

Otto sees his wife and children for the last time

The hiding period came to an abrupt end when, on 4 August 1944, Dutch police officers headed by SS-Hauptscharführer Karl Josef Silberbauer unexpectedly raided the Secret Annex. The hiding place had been discovered. Otto and the other people in hiding were arrested. Otto felt guilty when they also took Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler.

After a few days in prison, Otto and the others were put on a train to the Westerbork transit camp. They ended up in the prison barracks, and the men and women were separated. Otto had to work during the day - the kind of work is not known - but in the evening he could be with Edith, Margot, and Anne.

After only a few weeks in Westerbork, Otto and the others were put on train travelling to the east. This was the last train ever to leave Westerbork for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. The prisoners were packed tightly in cattle wagons, without enough food and with only a small barrel for a toilet.

After three days on the train, they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The men and women were separated on the platform. It was the last time Otto would ever see his wife and children.

Weighing 52 kilos

After the separation on the Auschwitz-Birkenau platform, the men from the Secret Annex stayed together. At first, Otto was put to work outside the camp in the 'Kommando Kiesgrube', a gravel mine. The gravel was used for construction projects. Then, he was transferred to the 'Kommando Strassenbau', building roads outside the camp. When the frost made working outdoors impossible, Otto ended up with less exhausting work: peeling potatoes.

Otto felt greatly supported by Peter van Pels, who would sometimes be able to get some extra food through his job in the camp's post office. He was also helped by other friends in the camp. When at one point, Otto lost hope after he had been beaten, his fellow inmates, with the help of a Dutch doctor, made sure that he was admitted to the sick barracks.

When the Soviet troops came closer, the camp command cleared Auschwitz. Those able to walk, had to come along. Otto stayed behind in the sick barracks. He was too weak to travel, weighed only 52 kilogrammes and was in no condition to join.

Otto's main worry: have Margot and Anne survived?

Otto expected the prisoners remaining behind to be shot, but that did not happen. On 27 January 1945, Soviet troops entered the camp. Otto felt that it was a miracle that he had survived. 'I was lucky and had good friends,' he wrote to his mother on 18 March.

As soon as Otto had his strength back, he wanted nothing more than to return to the Netherlands. As the fighting was still going on in large parts of Europe, he had to make a long detour. In Odessa (then in the Soviet Union, today in Ukraine) he got on board of the 'Monowai', a ship that was heading towards Marseille (France), with hundreds of other survivors.

During the long journey, Rosa de Winter - who had been imprisoned together with Edith in Auschwitz - told him that his wife had died in Auschwitz. From that moment on, all his hopes were pinned on Anne and Margot. Would they still be alive? On 3 June 1945, ten months after his arrest, Otto was back in Amsterdam. To his great relief, the helpers of the Secret Annex had all survived the war. Otto moved in with helpers Jan and Miep Gies.

'I had had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings. I had to acknowledge that I had not known what went on in her mind.'

Otto receives Anne's diary

Otto's hope that Anne and Margot might have survived the concentration camps ended in July 1945, when he met with the Brilleslijper sisters, who had been imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen with Anne and Margot. They told him about their miserable last months and about their deaths due to illness and exhaustion.

When Miep learned the sad news, she handed Anne's diaries over to Otto. At first, he could not summon the courage to read them, but once he started, he was gripped by her writing.

Otto copied passages from the diaries and asked family and friends to read them. Some of them pushed him to have her diaries published, but that was easier said than done: so soon after the war, people wanted to look forward rather than back.

Eventually, Otto found a publisher and Anne's diary was published two years after the war: 'Anne would have been so proud if she had lived to see it,' Otto wrote about that first Dutch edition. Translations into French, German and English were soon to follow.

Living in Amsterdam hurts too much

In spite of the loyalty of his friends and the success of the diary in the Netherlands, Otto felt he would forever associate Amsterdam with his pain and loss. In 1952, he moved to Basel (Switzerland). One year later, Otto remarried to Fritzi Geiringer in Amsterdam. Fritzi already had a daughter, Eva, who was born in 1929, just like Anne.

Otto remained closely involved with the Anne Frank House, which was founded to preserve Prinsengracht 263 and its annex. Of course, he was present at the opening of the Anne Frank House on 3 May 1960. He spoke only briefly, as his emotions overpowered him.

In the following years, Otto was the initiator of international youth conferences held in Amsterdam. During these conferences - at which he was present - young people discussed topics such as 'Is there still room for religion in the modern world' (1966), 'Youth protest' (1967) and 'Youth and human rights' (1968).

Fighting for reconciliation and human rights

Countless readers of Anne's diary contacted Otto. Some of them kept corresponding with him over the years, others became real friends of Otto and Fritzi. About the letters, Otto wrote: 'I often end my letters by writing: "I hope that Anne's book will impact the rest of your life so that insofar as it is possible in your own circumstances, you will work for unity and peace."'

Otto died on 19 August 1980. Shortly before his death, he said in an interview: 'I am almost ninety now and my strength is slowly fading. But the mission that Anne passed on, keeps giving me new strength - to fight for reconciliation and for human rights across the world.' ﻿

References

1. Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation [NIOD], The Diary of Anne Frank: the revised critical edition (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2003), A-version, 16 May 1944.

2. Frank, Otto, "Erinnerungen an Anne" (typescript, 1968).

3. NIOD, The Diary of Anne Frank, B-version, 17 October 1944.

4. Gies, Miep & Gold, Alison Leslie, Anne Frank remembered (London etc.: Bantam Press, 1987), p. 88.

5. "Anne Franks Vater: Ich will Versöhnung". In: Welt am Sonntag, 4 February 1979.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Otto Frank was the second son of Michael Frank and Alice Betty Stern. The family lived in Germany and were liberal Jews. They valued Jewish traditions and holidays but did not observe all religious laws. Father Michael Frank was the proud owner of a business bank in Frankfurt am Main.

# data[].attributes.body
Relfexe s pracovním listem

# data[].attributes.body
Povídejte si ve trojicích/čtveřicích, jaké skupiny jste si vyplnili do myšlenkové mapy ke svému jménu. Které skupiny jsou pro vás nejdůležitější a proč?
Mění se důležitost, které pro vás jednotlivé skupiny mají, v čase?

# data[].attributes.body
Časová osa

# data[].attributes.body
Časová osa

# data[].attributes.body
Časová osa

# data[].attributes.body
Časová osa