Ana Frank’s diary

With the title The Diary of Anne Frank editing the known daily written personal by Anne Frank from the December to June of 1942 and the 1 of August of 1944 in a total of three notebooks preserved today, ^one which recounts his History as an adolescent and the two years in which she remained hidden from the Nazis with her German family of Jewish origin in Amsterdam during World War II .

Context of the Journal

He hid with his family, another family Jewish (the Van Pels) and a dentist (Dussel), in an attic of a department store in Amsterdam during the occupation Nazi of Netherlands , Anne Frank with thirteen, in his diary, which he called “Kitty,” the life of the group. Helped by several office employees, they remained for more than two years in the achterhuis (known as the “back house”) until they were finally reported and arrested. Ana wrote a diary between June 12, 1942 and August 1, 1944. On August 4, 1944, some neighbors (names unknown) report the eight hidden in “the house behind.” In addition to the Journal he wrote several short stories that have been published gradually since 1960. His sister, Margot Frank also wrote a diary, but never found any trace of it.

The 4 of August of 1944 , a commission of agents of the Gestapo under the command of SS Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer stop all occupants and are taken to different concentration camps .

After spending time in the Westerbork concentration camps in the Netherlands and Auschwitz in Poland, Ana and her older sister, Margot, were deported to Bergen-Belsen , where both died during a typhus epidemic between late February and mid in March of 1945 (typhus was caused by extreme lack of hygiene in the camp). Edith Holländer (mother of Margot and Ana) dies of starvation in the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau . Hermann Van Pels (one of eight hidden) was sent on September 6, 1944 to the gas chambers of Auschwitz , where he died weeks later. His wife, Auguste Van Pels , died in mid-April 1945 at the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Peter Van Pels dies on May 5, 1945, three days before the release. As for Fritz Pfeffer , he died in the concentration camp of Neuengamme , 20 of December of 1944.

His father, Otto Frank , was the only one of the hidden who survived the concentration camps. When she returned to Amsterdam, Miep Gies , one of the people who had helped them during her stay in the annex, gave her the diary contained in five books and a set of leaflets that her daughter had written while they were hidden. In 1947 , according to Ana’s wishes, her father decided to publish the newspaper and since then it has become one of the most widely read books in the world.

The newspaper is first published under the title Het Achterhuis (the back house) in Amsterdam , The Netherlands , in 1947 , by Editorial Contact. ² In April of 1955 the first translation to Spanish is published with the title The rooms of behind ( publishing Garbo , Barcelona ). ³ Later editions in Spanish usually bear titles like Diary of Anne Frank or Diary of Anne Frank . ⁴

In 1959 , the Journal was taken to the movies and in the United States adapted as a television series in 1967.

After the death of Otto Frank in 1980 , he bequeathed the writings to the Dutch Institute for War Documentation . The Anne Frank Fund ( Switzerland ) is the heir of the copyrights of the texts. In 1998 , five more unknown pages of the newspaper were published.

The book was a hit worldwide, especially in Israel , the United States and the United Kingdom , where it remained No. 1 on the best-selling book lists for 20 consecutive weeks. It has sold more than 30,000,000 copies.

The Diary and stories

The stories handwritten by Ana are found in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the War Documentary Archive, also in Amsterdam. The book written by Ana “Cuentos” that contains the first 35 stories, is conserved in the House of Anne Frank. The remaining loose leaves are preserved in the Documentary Archive. Also some of these stories are part of the edition of the Journal so there are some insignificant divergences between the original version and the loose leaves.

In the German version of the Journal, the following stories are included:

“They broke in to steal?” (March 25, 1943)
“The Dentist” (December 10, 1942)
“Day of sausages” (December 10, 1942)
“The coveted little table” (July 13, 1943)
“Anne and the theory” (July 29, 1943)
“The evening and the night in the annex” (August 4, 1943)
“Time to Eat” (August 5, 1943)
“The annex with eight people at the table” (August 9, 1943)
“When the clock strikes eight-thirty” (August 23, 1943)
“The daily task in the community: Peeling potatoes!” (August 18, 1943)
“Freedom in the Annex” (August 20, 1943)
“Kaatje” (August 7, 1943); Katrie

People cited in the newspaper

Otto Frank stayed in Auschwitz with other sick prisoners and survived. In 1953 , he married Elfride ‘Fritzi’ Markovits-Geiringer. Fritzi, also a survivor of Auschwitz, had lost her husband and a son in the same camp. Otto Frank devoted his whole life to spreading the message of his daughter and his diary, as well as defending him from all accusations that it was false. He died of lung cancer in Switzerland the 19 of August of 1980 . His widow, Fritzi, continued with Otto’s work until he died in October 1998 .

Edith Frank-Holländer , the mother of Anna and Margot, remained at Auschwitz after her daughters and Auguste Van Pels were deported to Bergen-Belsen . That was when his health began to suffer. Several witnesses say that the fact of being separated from his family plunged it into utter despair. These witnesses also said that Edith was always looking for her daughters and did not seem to understand that they had left, even though she had seen them board the train that pulled them out of Auschwitz. Also, they said that he kept the little food he could get under the mattress to give Ana and Margot. Edith said that her daughters needed more food than she did, and so she refused to eat. He died of starvation on 6 of January of 1945 .

Margot Frank , was Ana’s older sister, born in 1926 , was very good at academic level and also greater than Ana by three years of age. She was summoned by the German occupation authority in the Netherlands to be transferred to Germany to provide compulsory labor, which meant deportation to a death camp, reason for the Frank family to hide in the shelter. Arrested in August 1944 , she was deported with her mother and sister to the Auschwitz concentration camp . At the end of October of 1944, it is sent back to the concentration camp of Bergen Belsen where it passed away of typhus in the beginning of March of 1945 , in the few days Ana passed away.

Hermann van Pels , who in the published version appears under the pseudonym of Hermann van Daan (and as Hans van Daan in the first manuscript), is the only one of the eight hidden who was sent to the gas chamber , died in the Field of Concentration of Auschwitz in Poland . According to eyewitnesses, this did not happen the same day of his arrival there. Sol de Liema , an Auschwitz prisoner who knew both Otto Frank and van Pels, said that after two or three days in the camp, Hermann van Pels gave up mentally, the beginning of the end of any prisoner in a camp. concentration. Shortly after a selection, was sent to the gas chamber. This occurred about three weeks after his arrival at the camp. His son, Peter, and Otto Frank witnessed this selection.

Auguste van Pels , who in the published version appears under the pseudonym of Petronella van Daan. The date and place of his death are unknown, but several witnesses say he spent time with the Frank sisters in Bergen-Belsen . However, they also say that Auguste was not there when the two girls died. Therefore,is very likely to be deported before March 1945 to the concentration camp of Buchenwald in Germany and then to Theresienstadt . It is believed that he died on the way to Theresienstadt or shortly after his arrival there.

Peter van Pels , who appears in the newspaper under the pseudonym Peter van Daan ( 8 of November of 1926 - 5 of maypole of 1945 ), died in the concentration camp Mauthausen in Austria . Otto Frank protected him while they stayed together in Auschwitz , since the two were in the same working group. Later, Otto stated that he asked Peter to hide and stay with him in the Auschwitz Nursing. However, Peter was selected for an evacuation march to the Mauthausen extermination camp and decided that he would be more likely to survive if he joined the march. He died at age 18, three days before Allied troops liberated Mauthausen .

Fritz Pfeffer , who in the published version appears as Mr. Albert Dussel, was the family dentist of the van Pels family and Miep Gies. He died on 20 of December of 1944 in the field of Neuengamme . In the records of the field it appears that he died of ” enterocolitis ” which, among other things, caused dysentery . Many prisoners died because of this. There is no particular burial place for his remains.

Those who helped hide

Miep Gies found the diary in the annex and preserved it without reading it. He later said that if he had read it, he would have needed to destroy it, since it contained a great deal of incriminating information. She and her husband took Otto Frank’s guest home, where he lived from his return in 1945 to 1952 . In 1994 he received the “Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, ” and in 1995 received the highest honor of Yad Vashem , the Righteous Among the Nations in Israel . She was named “Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau” by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. In 1996 he shared an Academy Award® with Jon Blair for his documentary ” Remembering Anne Frank, ” based largely on his book of the same title. He also contributed much information to the biography of Melissa Müller about Anne Frank . He has indicated that each year he keeps a duel on August 4, the date on which his friends were arrested in the Annex. Miep Gies died on January 11, 2010 at the age of one hundred years after a short illness after suffering a fall.

Jan Gies , Miep’s husband, was a social worker, and also during the war, an active member of the Dutch Resistance against the German occupiers. By doing this he was able to acquire food and other items for refugees from the Annex, which would have been almost impossible to obtain legally. Jan died of complications of diabetes , the 26 of January of 1993 in Amsterdam .

Johannes Kleiman spent about six weeks in a labor camp after his arrest, and was released after the intervention of the Red Cross because of his fragile health. He returned to Opekta , and took over the company of Otto Frank , when he moved to Basel in 1952 . He died in 1959 at his office desk, at the age of sixty-three.

Victor Kugler spent seven months in various fields of work, and finally escaped in March 1945 when, still being detained in a field, it was machine-gunned by British Spitfires. He returned on foot and by bicycle to his hometown of Hilversum, where he remained in hiding until liberation by the Canadian troops. After his wife died, Kugler immigrated to Canada in 1955 (where several of his relatives lived) and resided in Toronto . He received the “Medal of the Righteous” Memorial of Yad Vashem , with a tree planted in his honor by Boulevard of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1973 . He died 16 of December of 1981 in Toronto, after a long illness, at the age of eighty-one years.

Bep Voskuijl left Opekta shortly after the war and married in 1946 . He once granted an interview to a Dutch magazine some years shortly after the war, later refused to give interviews and most of the publicity. However, Bep kept his own book of notes related to Ana, throughout his life items, and put his daughter the name “Annelies Marie”, in honor of Ana. He died in Amsterdam on 6 of maypole of 1983 .

Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl (father of Bep) was constantly praised for helping to hide the eight Jews in hiding during their first days in the Secret Annex. However, her poor health is often mentioned by Ana in her diary, and became incapacitated after a diagnosis of cancer. He died of the disease in late November 1945.

Friends of Ana appearing in the Diary

Hanneli Goslar - Known for being a friend of Ana’s childhood, she was called “Hanneli” or “Lies”, Hannah was Ana’s closest friend along with Sanne Ledermann. While Hannah was detained in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , she met with Auguste van Pels asking through a hay full of barbed wire nearby, that if anyone could recognize his Dutch speaking. Auguste van Pels replied, and reminded Hannah of pre-war times in Amsterdam . Mrs. van Pels then told her that Ana was a prisoner of the section of the camp where she was herself. Hannah was surprised because I thought, like most people in Amsterdam, that Frank had escaped to Switzerland . Hannah was able to talk to Ana several times through the barrier, and to bring her up to date on some essential things for her. Hannah said that Ana believed that her parents were dead, and in recent years expressed that if Ana had known that her father was still alive, she might have found the strength to survive until the liberation of the camp. Shortly after, Ana’s contingent moved, and Hannah never heard from her again. Hannah and her younger sister Gabi were the only members of her family who survived the war, and Hannah was close to dying as there was an epidemic of typhus and tuberculosis when the Russians released the train in which she and Gabi were being transported, Reportedly to Theresienstadt. Hannah now lives in Israel, is a nurse, and had ten grandchildren since the mid-1990s.

Susanne Ledermann or “Sanne” was Ana’s companion from the moment of her arrival in Amsterdam, and is mentioned several times at the beginning of the agenda. It was considered the “silent” one of the trio of “Anne, Hanne and Sanne”. She was very intelligent, and according to Ana, very good at poetry. The complete name of Sanne is diverse in the different sources that appear like “Susanne” and “Susana”. Only her friends called her Sanne, her family used the most Germanic “Susi”. After his return to Amsterdam, Otto Frank learned that his parents and Sanne Franz and Ilse were arrested on June 20, 1943. Sanne and his parents were first sent to Westerbork, then on November 16 to Auschwitz, where the three were Gassed on arrival. The sister of Sanne Ledermann, Barbara, who was a friend of Margot’s, through contacts in the Netherlands, acquired an Aryan ID card (becoming Barbara Waarts) and worked as a courier for the subway. She survived the war and later married biochemist and Nobel Prize winner, Martin Rodbell .

Jacqueline van Maarsen or “Jacque” and “Jopie” was Ana’s “best friend” shortly before the Frank family hid in July 1942 . Jacque was Ana’s favorite friend, although sometimes he found her too demanding in her friendship. Later in her diary, Ana wrote her remorse for her tough attitude towards Jacque, since she only wanted to be her “best friend” … in the newspaper she wrote that “… I just want to apologize and explain things.” After two and a half months in hiding, Ana wrote a farewell letter to Jacque in her diary, vowing her friendship forever. Unfortunately Jacque was able to read this letter after the war, when the newspaper was published. Jacque van Maarsen born of a Christian mother and along with several other circumstances, was able to avoid the “J” (for “Jewish”) obtaining to obtain cards of identification of Dutch. The Maarsens therefore, could live the war years in Amsterdam. Jacque later married a friend from his childhood, and still lives in Amsterdam, where he is an award-winning bookbinder. She was one of the first people to whom Otto Frank taught Anne’s original Journals but could not read. In 1947 , he received one of the copies of the first edition but read it hesitantly because of the pain it produced. Years later he wrote three books about his remarkable friendship with the Jewish writer: Anne and Jopie (1990), My Friend Anne Frank (1996) and My Name is Anne, said Anne Frank (2003).

Nannette “Nanny” Blitz is a friend of Ana, from school. While not always their friendship was in the best conditions for some differences in the school (both were of similar character) Nanny was invited to the birthday number 13 of Ana, 12 of June of 1942 . Nanny is referred to in the diary as “ES”. Deported to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen with his family, he survives but his parents and brother die in the field. He shared with Anna in Bergen Belsen several weeks, lost his trail shortly before the end of the war. He was in a sanitarium after liberation while recovering from a strong tuberculosis , Otto Frank contacted her on the advice of Hanneli Goslar , Nanny wrote him some information about the end of Ana and Margot in the field. Nanny and her family, emigrated in 1998 and reside in São Paulo , Brazil .

Ilse Wagner, who van Maarsen Jacque calls “a sweet and sensitive girl”, is mentioned several times in the first part of the agenda. Her family had a set of table tennis, and Ana and Margot went frequently to their house to play. Wagner was the first of Ana’s circle of friends to be deported. Along with his mother and grandmother, she was sent to Westerbork in January 1943 , then to the extermination camp of Sobibor , where all three were gassed upon arrival on 2 of April of 1943 .

Lutz Peter Schiff: Among all the children who admired Ana for her sympathy at school, the most talked about young writer in her Journal was Peter Schieff, who was called “Petel”. She was three years older than Ana, and according to her, they were “inseparable” during the summer of 1940 , when Ana was only 11 years old. Then Peter and his family moved in and his new high school classmates convinced him that Anna was “just a girl”, which is why they split up. Anna had several vivid dreams of Peter, while in the underground, wrote about him in his diary, and noticed that she saw in Peter van Pels , at least partially, Peter Schiff’s replacement. Anne implies in her diary, at the entrance of December of January of 1944 , Peter Schiff gave her a pendant as a gift, which thereafter were very dear friends. Peter was registered with his mother entering the concentration camp of Westerbork in Holland the 23 of September of 1943 , but not having complied with the Order call for the Labour Service in Germany was prosecuted criminally and held in the bunkhouse 67th Field . His mother and stepfather were separated and sent the 18 of January of 1945 , to the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Peter -given that his biological father had emigrated to the United States - it was placed on the list of prisoners “whose closest relatives are in foreign countries enemies” and deported on 1 of February of 1944 to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen , from there he was transferred to the concentration camp Auschwitz where he died, the exact date of his death is not known but is set on 31 of maypole of 1945 .

Helmuth “Hello” Silberberg was a boy very close to Ana, in the days before the passage of the Frank family into hiding, even though Ana had known him only for two weeks. His grandfather, who did not like Helmuth’s name, called him “Hello.” He was 16, and he adored Ana, but she wrote in her diary that ” I’m not in love with Hello , he’s just a friend, or as one of my admirers would say .” Hello had been living in Amsterdam with his grandparents , but for a very convoluted series of events, including persecution by the Nazis , he was finally able to reunite with his parents in Belgium . This was also a country occupied by the Germans , however, and he and his family are still “in hiding”, though not in such difficult circumstances as the Franks. The town where hiding Silberbergs was released on 3 of September of 1944 , the day he was released Hello, Anne and her family were on the last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz . Hello emigrated to the United States of America after the war, and today is known as Ed Silverberg and has given several interviews about his experience meeting Anne Frank . ⁵ He died on June 26, 2015. ⁶