Anne Frank

Jennifer Horner Prof. Barmann 10/29/00 The Franks were an old German- Jewish family. Anne, the youngest daughter, was born on June 12, 1929, in the town of Frankfurt-on-Main in Germany. Anne Frank records her feelings, emotions, and thoughts, as well as the events that happened while forced into hiding, in her diary. Four years later, in the summer of 1933, the Frank family moved to Holland because Hitler had come into power in Germany and had introduced strict laws which discriminated against Jews. In addition, gangs of Nazi thugs would roam the streets, beating up Jews for no reason except that they were Jews. Realizing how dangerous the political situation was becoming, Mr. Frank prepared a refuge where his family could go into hiding. Preferring this rather than submitting to arrest by the Nazis and being dispatched to concentration camps and to almost certain death. At the beginning of July, 1942, when it would have been foolish to delay not going into hiding, the Franks, along with a family called the Van Daans moved into the "Secret Annexe." In the building where Mr. Frank's offices and warehouse were situated, they simply vanished from sight, overnight. When the Nazis occupied Holland in 1940, Anne was only eleven years old. Like many parents, Mr. and Mrs. Frank tried to protect their children from the edicts issued by the Nazis. Although the girls knew that they had to change schools and wear the "yellow star" on their clothes, they did not have any direct contact with Nazis. In general, the Dutch people were sympathetic to the plight of the Jews, and many helped them with a kind word or little gifts. The grisly, wholesale murder of Jews in concentration camps did not really get underway until 1942, therefore in 1940 no one could imagine that the annihilation of an entire people was possible. By the time Anne and the others went into hiding in June 1942, they knew that Jews were being rounded up, beaten, stripped of their possessions, and sent east. They suspected that the conditions out there were not good, but Nazi propaganda insisted that the "resettlement" was to the Jews' benefit, and there was no clear information to be obtained as to what really went on. In her diary Anne writes, " Our many Jewish friends are being taken away by the dozen. These people are treated by the Gestapo without a shred of decency, loaded into cattle trucks and sent to Westerbork... Most of people in the camp are branded as inmates by their shaven heads...If it is as bad as this in Holland, whatever will it be like in the distant and barbarous regions they are sent to? We assume that most of them are murdered. The English radio speaks of their being gassed." (October 9, 1942) From this and other remarks in which, Anne writes we know that she and the other members of the group in hiding knew what was happening to the Jews on the outside, to a greater or lesser extent. Also there was a radio in the office, and they would creep downstairs at night and listen to the BBC broadcasts, giving them a fairly good idea of what was going on. The windows of the "Secret Annexe" allowed its inmates