2. Birth and Pre-War Life
• Anne Frank was born on June 12,
1929 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany
as the second daughter of Otto Frank
and Edith Hollander Frank.
• Anne spent the first few years of her
life in a mixed neighborhood of
Christian and Jewish children, and
spent many afternoons playing with
her older sister, Margot.
• Anne had a very good relationship
with her sister, although their
personalities were polar opposites.
Anne was very outgoing, energetic
and extraverted, while Margot was
quiet, dedicated to her studies and
introverted.
3. The Trouble Begins…
• In March 1933, Hitler’s Nazi
party was elected, anti-
Semitic measures were put
into effect.
• Edith, Margot, and Anne
moved to Aachen, Germany
to stay with their grandmother
until Otto Frank secured a
new job and an apartment in
Amsterdam.
• Otto was joined by the rest of
his family in February 1934.
Anne began school and
attended a Montessori school
where she enjoyed reading
and writing.
4. • The next few years in the
Netherlands were relatively
quiet, but the Franks kept
hearing stories from friends in
Germany about the
deteriorating conditions for the
Jewish population.
•Otto Frank established a second company in
June 1938 with Herman Van Pels, whose family
would join the Franks in their hiding place.
•The Van Pels had also fled Germany in 1938
because of the escalating anti-Semitism.
5. • The escalating anti-Semitism also became evident in the
Netherlands, and in May 1940, the Germans invaded the
Netherlands, and immediately began to impose
restrictions on the Jewish population.
• The restrictions included the registration of all Jews,
segregation into Jewish schools, and the requirement
that Jews wear a yellow star to distinguish them from
other citizens.
•The star, which represented the star of
David, was outlined in thick, black lines
and the word 'Jew' was printed in mock-
Hebraic type.
•The star was intended to humiliate Jews
and to mark them out for segregation and
discrimination.
•The policy also made it easier to identify
Jews for deportation to camps.
6. • In 1941, Anne started to
attend the Jewish Lyceum,
and had to leave many of her
friends behind, and was
discouraged to talk to them.
• The discriminatory laws
continued to get worse over
the course of the next year.
•Anne experienced a brief period of happiness
when she turned 13 on June 12, 1942.
•Anne received a red, blue, and white plaid
autograph book from her father, which she decided
to use as a diary.
7. The Annexe
• In July 1942, Margot
received a notice to report
for transportation to a
Jewish work camp.
• Otto Frank then informed
Anne of their plan to hide
in the rooms behind Otto’s
office at 263
Prinsengracht.
•This plan had to be moved up a few weeks so that
Margot would not be forced to go to the camp.
•The Franks moved into the Secret Annexe on the
morning of July 6, 1942.
8. • 13 July 1942, the Franks were joined
by the van Pels family: Hermann,
Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter, and
in November by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist
and friend of the family.
• After sharing her room with Pfeffer,
she found him to be insufferable and
resented his intrusion, and she
clashed with Auguste, whom she
regarded as foolish.
• She saw Hermann van Pels and Fritz
Pfeffer as selfish, particularly in regard
to the amount of food they consumed.
•Some time later, after first dismissing the shy and awkward
Peter van Pels, she recognised a kinship with him and the two
entered a romance.
•She received her first kiss from him, but her infatuation with
him began to wane as she questioned whether her feelings for
him were genuine, or resulted from their shared confinement.
9. The Arrest
• On the morning of 4 August
1944, the Achterhuis was
stormed by the German
Security Police following a tip-
off from an informer who was
never identified.
• The Franks, van Pelses and
Pfeffer were taken to the •Two days later they were
Gestapo headquarters where transported to Westerbork,a
they were interrogated and
held overnight. transit camp.
• On 5 August, they were •By this time more than
transferred to the Huis van 100,000 Jews had passed
Bewaring, an overcrowded through it.
prison.
•They were considered
criminals and were sent to the
Punishment Barracks for hard
labor.
10. • Victor Kugler and Johannes
Kleiman were arrested and
jailed at the penal camp for
enemies of the regime.
• Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl
were questioned and
threatened by the Security
Police but were not detained.
• They returned to the
Achterhuis the following day,
and found Anne's papers
strewn on the floor.
•They collected them, as well as several family
photograph albums, and Gies resolved to return them
to Anne after the war.
•On 7 August 1944, Gies attempted to facilitate the
release of the prisoners by confronting Silberbauer
and offering him money to intervene, but he refused.
11. eportation and death
• On Sept. 3 the group was deported on what would be the last
transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp
• In the chaos of the unloading of the trains, the men were separated
from the women and children, and Otto Frank was wrenched from
his family.
• Of the 1,019 passengers, 549—including all children younger than
fifteen—were sent directly to the gas chambers.
• Anne, at 15, was one of the youngest people to be spared from her
transport.
• She was soon made aware that most people were gassed upon
arrival, and never learned that the entire group from the Achterhuis
had survived this selection.
• She reasoned that her father, in his mid-fifties and not particularly
robust, had been killed immediately after they were separated.
12. • By day, the women were used
as slave labor and Anne was
forced to haul rocks and dig
rolls of sod; by night, they were
crammed into overcrowded
barracks.
• Witnesses later testified Anne
became withdrawn and tearful
when she saw children being
led to the gas chambers,
though other witnesses
reported more often she
displayed strength and courage
•Before long, Anne's skin became badly infected by scabies.
She and Margot were moved into an infirmary, which was in a
state of constant darkness, and infested with rats and mice.
•Edith Frank stopped eating, saving every morsel of food for
her daughters and passing her rations to them, through a hole
she made at the bottom of the infirmary wall.
13. • On 28 October, selections began
for women to be relocated to
Bergen-Belsen.
• More than 8,000 women,
including Anne and Margot Frank
and Auguste van Pels, were
transported, but Edith Frank was
left behind and died from
starvation.
•As the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased. Anne
was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar and Nanette Blitz,
who were also confined in the camp.
•Goslar and Blitz both survived the war and later discussed their
conversations with Anne. Blitz described her as bald, emaciated and
shivering and Goslar noted Auguste van Pels was with Anne and
Margot Frank, and was caring for Margot, who was severely ill.
•Anne told both Blitz and Goslar she believed her parents were dead,
and for that reason did not wish to live any longer.
14. • In March 1945, a typhus epidemic spread through the camp and
killed approximately 17,000 prisoners.
• Witnesses later testified Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened
state and was killed by the shock, and a few days later Anne died.
This occurred weeks before the camp was liberated by British
troops on 15 April 1945.
• After liberation, the camp was burned in an effort to prevent further
spread of disease, and Anne and Margot were buried in a mass
grave, the exact whereabouts of which is unknown.
•After the war, it was estimated of the 107,000
Jews deported from the Netherlands between
1942 and 1944, only 5,000 survived.
•Otto Frank survived Auschwitz and returned to
Amsterdam where he was sheltered by Jan and
Miep Gies. He remained hopeful that his
daughters had survived. After several weeks, he
discovered Margot and Anne had also died.
