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An iconic girl with a tragic story

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Anne was only 15 when she died in a concentration camp towards the end of World War II. Although Anne did not survive, her story lived on through the hands of her father, Otto Frank.

Otto first published Anne's diary in 1947. It has since been considered a source of great insight into life under Nazi control.

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What events led up to the Holocaust? What was happening in the world when 15 year old Anne was hiding in the Annex?

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With the start of the second World War and a swift succession of German victories, the Nazi regime began realizing its longstanding goal of territorial expansion. Under conditions of war and military occupation, they could pursue racial goals with more radical measures. The German Army, military, SS, and German police units took an active part in authorized mass murders of Jews in the Soviet Union. The Germans and their collaborators deported roughly 2.7 million Jews and others from occupied Europe to killing centers in German-occupied Poland. At the largest of the camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, transports arrived from all across Europe. The camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz were the first liberated, as Soviet troops reached Poland. As more Allied soldiers saw the camps with their own eyes, the truth was undeniable.

Discussion Questions

How did the Nazis lead Germany to war in Europe and, with their collaborators, kill millions-including systematically murdering six million Jewish people?

Why is learning about the Holocaust important?

Transcript

TEXT ON SCREEN:
World War II and the Holocaust, 1939-1945

NARRATOR:
As the Nazi regime implemented its long-standing goal of territorial expansion, aggression against Germany's neighbors initially succeeded without encountering armed resistance. Hitler counted on the reluctance of Britain and Europe to intervene, for fear of another war. The German occupation of Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia, left no doubt as to Germany's intent on military conquest in Eastern Europe. On September 1, 1939, a massive German force invaded and conquered Poland within a month. It was the start of the Second World War. In April 1940, Germany occupied Denmark and Norway. In May, the German armed forces attacked France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. In June, Paris fell and France surrendered. The swift and unexpected victory over France avenged Germany's defeat and humiliation in the First World War. It propelled Hitler to a new level of popularity and trust among the German people. In June 1941, the German Army, with more than three million soldiers, invaded the Soviet Union to wage a war of annihilation that targeted tens of millions of civilians. Under conditions of war and military occupation, the Nazi regime could pursue its political and racial goals with more radical measures. As German troops advanced into eastern Europe, Germany's power extended over millions more Jewish inhabitants in the occupied lands, where German authorities could exploit existing anti-Jewish attitudes among local populations.

Across eastern Europe, German authorities forced those identified as Jews into tightly packed areas called ghettos. Separated from the non-Jewish population, Jews in the larger ghettos were imprisoned behind brick walls and barbed wire. The German drive eastward was cast as a crusade against Judaism and Communism-in the Nazi view, two aspects of the same evil. German soldiers and police officials treated Soviet prisoners of war as sub-humans, either shooting them or deliberately causing their deaths by exposure to the elements and by starvation. Millions died in German captivity. On the eastern front, racial political instruction was part of regular training for all types of German occupation forces. SS chief Heinrich Himmler referred to the war against the Soviet Union in an address to his men: "This invasion is an ideological battle and a struggle of races. Here in this struggle stands National Socialism-an ideology based on the value of our Germanic, Nordic blood... On the other side stands a population of 180 million, a mixture of races whose very names are unpronounceable, and whose physique is such that one can shoot them down without pity and compassion..." In July 1941, Hermann Göring-Hitler's second-in-command-authorized all necessary preparations for the "final solution of the Jewish question" in the European territory under German control.

As German military forces advanced, mobile killing squads advanced with them. The German Army, military SS and German police units took an active part in authorized mass murders. The Germans and their accomplices rounded up the victims, drove them on foot or in trucks to a killing site, often made them remove their clothes, and shot them. Participants in the murders included local collaborators-especially police-in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine and Belarus. The German killing squads and their auxiliaries murdered at least two million Jewish men, women and children in mass shooting operations.

Back in Germany, SS and police deported the remaining Jews to the occupied eastern territories. In German-occupied Warsaw, the walled ghetto that German Jews entered as newcomers in 1942 was already a place of mass suffering due to terrible overcrowding, lack of sanitation, disease and starvation imposed by the Germans. Despite all efforts of the imprisoned Jews to find ways of surviving and sustaining their communities, those conditions increasingly led to death for scores of thousands. Most vulnerable were the orphaned children.

Originally, German occupation authorities established ghettos to concentrate Jews and separate them from the non-Jewish population. Later in the war, many ghettos served as staging grounds for the transportation of Jews to the east, euphemistically called "resettlement" by the Germans, who promised their captives better conditions and opportunities to work. People endured unimaginable suffering on journeys that lasted days, without food, water, or toilet facilities. Many of the weak, the young, and the elderly died before reaching the destination.

The Germans and their collaborators deported roughly 2.7 million Jews and others to killing centers in German-occupied Poland. At the largest of the camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, transports arrived from all across Europe.

LILLY MALNIK, Auschwitz Survivor:
Transports were coming in every day, people with all kinds of different languages-Hungarian, Poles, Czechoslovakians, from Holland, from France, from Belgium, from Germany, from Italy, Russians. They were from everywhere.

NORBERT WOLLHEIM, Auschwitz Survivor:
My wife was somehow waving to me, and that's the last I've seen of her.

FRITZIE FRITZSHALL, Auschwitz Survivor:
The smell, gas chambers. When I asked, "When will I see my mother?"-I was shown the smoke. This is how I found out where she went.

ERNEST KOENIG, Auschwitz Survivor:
It took a long time until I started to realize that we are condemned to die. All Jews are condemned to die.

NARRATOR:
Those whom the SS judged unable to work were killed, often within two or three hours of arrival. Those who could work would be used for forced labor, under punishing conditions. When they could no longer work, they, too, would be put to death. In several killing facilities, exclusively designed to kill human beings on an industrial scale, camp authorities used poison gas to murder children, women and men. At these killing centers, nearly half of all Holocaust victims died.

The camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz were the first liberated, as Soviet troops reached Poland. News of Majdanek's liberation in summer 1944 was met with disbelief. The New York Herald Tribunesaid, "Maybe...we should wait for further corroboration...this...sounds inconceivable..." In April 1945, US troops in Germany and Austria came upon concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau, Nordhausen, Mauthausen and Ohrdruf. The soldiers saw the camps with their own eyes, and the truth was undeniable. General Dwight Eisenhower, Commander of the Allied liberating forces, wrote: "The things I saw beggar description.... The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were...overpowering..." In American movie theaters, newsreels made witnesses of thousands more. One commentator said, "To future generations it must be told: Once man did this to his brothers. In the 20th century there existed a civilization which for twelve years returned to barbarism."

Shock permeated the camps as liberating troops tried to grasp what they had found. Soldiers did all they could to attend to the dead and to support the living. Those who survived faced the slow task of reclaiming their dignity and returning-somehow-to life.

TEXT ON SCREEN:
The Holocaust darkened the world's view of humanity and our future. As the world struggled to understand what had happened, a new word, genocide, was needed for these crimes-crimes committed by ordinary people from a society not unlike our own.

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World War II and the Holocaust, 1939-1945 - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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With the start of the second World War and a swift succession of German victories, the Nazi regime began realizing its longstanding goal of territorial expansion. Under conditions of war and military occupation, they could pursue racial goals with more radical measures.

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Hardships faced by Jews under Nazi control

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Hardships faced by Jews under Nazi control

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There were many Anti-Jewish decrees:
-Yellow Patches worn on clothing labeled "Jew"
-Schools closed to Jewish children
-Jewish families couldn't receive milk and eggs
-Jews could not use typewriters, telephones, or bicycles
-Jews banned from parks, beaches, restaurants, pools

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A virtual view into the Secret Annex in which Anne and her family lived.

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Anne Frank takes us behind the movable bookcase

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This link offers a glimpse into real images of Anne's diary, and the typical types of entries she made in it.

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On Friday, June 12, 1942, Anne Frank received a diary from her father, Otto Frank, and that is where the story of her secret begins:

"I woke up at six o'clock, and no wonder; it was my [13th] birthday. ... Soon after seven I went to Mummy and Daddy and then to the sitting room to undo my presents. The first to greet me was you, possibly the nicest of all."

- Anne

A month later Anne and her family were in hiding from the Nazis, concealed away in what she called the "Secret Annex" (not the secret this article is about):

At first, the Annex seemed relatively "spacious" to the naive Anne, and staying there was "more like being on vacation in a very peculiar boardinghouse."

In reality, however, the hiding place was only ~815 square feet, which she would share - for the next two years - with seven other occupants, all of whom lived with the ever-present worry of being found out. As Anne later describes it: "We have to whisper and tread lightly during the day, otherwise people in the warehouse might hear us. ... The fact that we can never go outside bothers me more than I can say, and then I'm really afraid that we'll be discovered and shot." The Annex would not be the vacation Anne initially imagined.

Fortunately, however, within this otherwise stifling environment, Anne had a constant companion: her diary.

Sometimes the "support and comfort" of her diary meant that it was just a place where Anne could detail daily occurrences around the Annex:

"We had barley soup ... and it was very hot" (Aug 1, 1942)

"I have started knitting a sweater out of white wool" (Sep 21, 1942)

"Friday and Saturday I stayed in bed, I had a cold" (Oct 26, 1942)

"Bread is no longer served in the evenings now" (Mar 10, 1943)

"Tonight I washed Mummy's hair" (May 1, 1943)

"I bumped my head against the cupboard door" (Aug 10, 1943)

"[A] quarrel ... over something very trivial: the sharing of the butter" (June 5, 1944)

But usually it was where she could share her "thoughts and feelings", which ranged from deep and mature: "I don't want followers, but friends, admirers who fall not for a flattering smile but for what one does and for one's character", to shallow and juvenile: "Aren't they [the adults in the Annex] all stupid! We aren't allowed to have any opinions. ... no one, especially the stupid 'know-alls' here, can understand us." Anne definitely did not hold back in her diary.

Ironically, this outlet in which Anne could occasionally disparage the adults in hiding - including her own parents - was made possible by her father.

For in addition to giving Anne the original diary, Mr. Frank also promised his daughter complete privacy to write within it. As he said in an interview years later: "She left the diary with me at night, in a briefcase next to the bed. I had promised her never to look in. I never did."

No one in the Annex saw inside Anne's diary, unless she chose to share. In other words: Anne's diary was her secret.

Given the broader confines in which she was forced to live, her father's gift was a little taste of freedom and self-direction, a reprieve from the political world she was powerless to change and a refuge for a personal growth she was determined to effect. Through writing in her diary, Anne grew emotionally and intellectually, further developing her personality, her character, and ultimately her self.

For example, here are two brief diary passages - the first written not long after Anne went into hiding, the second nearly two years in - which together offer a glimpse into her incredible inner growth:

"Why on earth doesn't she [an adult occupant] keep her mouth shut about me, then she wouldn't need to make such feeble excuses." Sep 27, 1942 "Anne, you still have a lot to learn, begin by doing that first, instead of looking down on others and accusing them." May 7, 1944

And a couple months later, toward the end of her diary, emerges the upright young woman Anne wanted to become:

"Quite honestly, I can't imagine how anyone can say: 'I'm weak,' and then remain so. After all, if you know it, why not fight against it, why not try to train your character? ... We all live but we don't know the why or the wherefore. We all live with the object of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same. We three [Anne, Anne's sister Margot, and Peter, another teenager in hiding] have been brought up in good circles, we have the chance to learn, the possibility of attaining something, we have all reason to hope for much happiness, but ... we must earn it for ourselves. And that is never easy. You must work and do good, not be lazy and gamble, if you wish to earn happiness. Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction."

- Anne Frank

Anne wrote this when she was 15 years old.

So what would Anne have been like had she not been free to write as she pleased during the preceding two years, if her father had not respected the privacy of her diary? For instance, what if Mr. Frank had tried to be his daughter's 'best friend', wanting her to share everything with him; or if he had been a 'helicopter parent', looking over Anne's shoulder at every turn of the page?

Anne partially answers this question herself, in her diary:

Everyone needs a private place to share their deepest emotions, sometimes even just to let off steam, and Anne was no different. One day, for instance, after she was criticized by an adult in hiding, Anne let loose in her diary: "I'm expected (by order) to simply swallow all the harsh words and shouts in silence and I am not used to this. In fact, I can't! I'm not going to take all these insults lying down, I'll show them that Anne Frank wasn't born yesterday. Then they'll be surprised and perhaps keep their mouths shut when I let them see that I am going to start educating them."

But Anne's diary was more than just somewhere to freely vent, or even to thoughtfully introspect. It was also her creative outlet, as an aspiring writer.

Anne rejected the traditional life of a housewife - "I must have something besides a husband and children, something I can devote myself to" - and had hopes of writing for a living instead: "I want to write later on, and if I can't be a writer, to write in addition to my work."

And this was not the naive longing of a little girl.

Anne took her career goal seriously, and wrote a lot: "A few weeks ago I started to write a story, something I made up from beginning to end, and I've enjoyed it so much that the products of my pen are now piling up." Although it is not widely known, in addition to her diary Anne authored two other works: Tales from the House Behind, a collection of fables and short stories, and Cady's Life, an unfinished novel. An ambitious girl, Anne actually wrote these with the explicit aim of one day having them published.

A private diary (or a journal, a notebook, etc.) is not only a practical advantage for aspiring young writers, of course. As Anne's words show, it can be a sanctuary for the stirrings of a child's own soul - a place to record basic daily events, or to consider life's big issues; to angrily vent about the wrongs of others, or to soberly explore a lack of virtue in oneself; to bemoan past failings (in one particularly meaningful entry, Anne recalls "a long talk" and cry with her father), or to build future dreams. Ultimately, a diary can be a "support and comfort" in the forming of one's very self.

The educator Maria Montessori once said, "A child without a secret becomes an adult without personality." Tragically, the world will never meet the 'adult' that Anne Frank was becoming. (On Friday, August 4, 1944, the Annex was raided, and all the occupants were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Only Mr. Frank would return.) But at least as a young girl Anne experienced the good fortune of having a secret completely her own: a red-checkered diary, from a loving and thoughtful father.

Jesse McCarthy is the Founder and Head Guide of Montessori Education, an organization dedicated to helping parents and teachers raise independent, flourishing children - while enjoying themselves along the way.

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Anne Frank Had A Secret, And Every Parent Should Know It

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On Friday, June 12, 1942, Anne Frank received a diary from her father, Otto Frank, and that is where the story of her secret begins: A month later Anne and her family were in hiding from the Nazis, concealed away in what she called the "Secret Annex" (not the secret this article is about): At first, the Annex seemed relatively "spacious" to the naive Anne, and staying there was "more like being on vacation in a very peculiar boardinghouse."

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Explore the memories of a friendship shared by Hanneli & Anne, similar to the ones shared by you and your friends today.

In class journal assignment:
Write about a friendship you have that is similar to the one shared between Hanneli and Anne. Do you see any similarities in the way you interact with your friends?

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Hanneli & Anne: Memories of a Friendship

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This content resource is one in a series on Anne Frank. This site presents the story of Anne Frank's close friend, Hanneli Pick-Goslar. An interview with Pick-Goslar, a teacher's guide and links to other Anne Frank sites are included.