This year’s Holocaust Awareness Week, April 23-30, theme is 'Legacies of Justice.'

Franks’ Frankfurt roots

Family left German city to seek refuge in the Netherlands

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” is the touching and tragic story of a young Jewish girl forced into hiding during World War II. Anne, her sister Margot, father and mother and another family, the Van Pels, concealed themselves in a few cramped rooms at the top of the Frank’s business in Amsterdam from July 6, 1942, to Aug. 4, 1944. While in hiding, Anne wrote about her personal experiences as a teenager as the war raged around her.

The family was ultimately discovered — some think betrayed — and the group sent to the Westerbork camp in Holland in August 1944 before being sent to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland in September 1944. Anne and Margot were moved to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany late in 1944 and died of typhus and malnutrition there in March 1945 just weeks before Holland was liberated and two months before the end of the war in Europe.

Only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survived the war. Returning to Amsterdam in search of his family, he learned they were all dead. An employee of his business who helped hide the family saved Anne’s diary the day the Gestapo took the family away.

Friends urged Frank to publish the diary, but publishers were hesitant so soon after the war. Only after a Dutch newspaper published a story about Anne’s diary did a publisher appear. The first edition of 1,500 copies was printed in Dutch in 1947. It was translated into French and German and then published in English in 1951. It has been published in almost 70 languages and sold 20 million copies.

Many people don’t realize the Frank family came from Frankfurt. The family lived in two houses in Frankfurt before moving to Amsterdam in 1933. Both are in the northern area of Frankfurt — near the U.S. consulate and the Dornbush U-Bahn station.

Otto Frank was born May 12, 1889, and grew up in Frankfurt with two brothers and a sister. He studied economics at the University of Heidelberg and from 1909-1911 worked for Macy’s Department Store and a bank in New York City. He returned to Germany in 1911 and worked for a company in Düsseldorf that made window frames and for a company that made horseshoes for the German army.

Otto and his brothers were drafted into the German army at the start of World War I. His mother and sisters volunteered at a military hospital in Frankfurt. The war ended in 1918 after 2.5 million Germans were killed, but the entire Frank family survived. After the war Otto took over management of the family business, a bank called M. Frank and Sons which dealt primarily in currency trading. He met Edith Hollander in 1924 and they married on May 12, 1925, in Aachen.

Anne’s mother, Edith, was born in Aachen on Jan. 16, 1900. She was 24, and Otto 36, when they married.

The Frank’s first child, a daughter, Margot Betti, was born Feb. 16, 1926. A month later, they moved to Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt, a large house in a quiet neighborhood on the edge of the city. They lived on Marbachweg from 1929-31.

This house still stands and you can see where Anne lived the first two years of her life. The Franks lived in the first two floors on the right side of the large multi-family building. This was a multi-ethnic neighborhood. Margot and Anne’s friends were Catholic, Protestant and Jewish.

Annelies Marie Frank was born in a Frankfurt hospital on June 12, 1929. By 1929 the worldwide economic crisis, known as the Great Depression in America, had taken hold. Business at the Frank family bank declined severely. In addition, the landlord of their house was a member of the Nazi party.

Otto and Edith decided to move to Ganghoferstrasse 24 at the end of March 1931. The new house was smaller, less expensive and in a better neighborhood for the children with walking paths and hills for sledding in winter. This house still stands as well.

The Nazi party continued to gain widespread support fueled by the economic crisis. In July 1932 it became the largest political party in Germany with 37 percent of the vote. Adolf Hitler was voted chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933.

In March 1933 Otto set up a company in the Netherlands. The business, called Opekta Works, produced pectin, a powdered fruit extract used primarily to help jams and jellies thicken.

The Franks moved to their new home in Amsterdam leaving their native country behind forever. None of the Franks ever returned to live in Germany again.

Anne’s grandmother, Otto’s mother, also left Germany and moved to Basel, Switzerland, in 1933. In 1952 Otto also left Amsterdam and lived the rest of his life in Basel. He died there on Aug. 19, 1980, at the age of 91.

The house in Amsterdam where the family hid and where Anne wrote her now famous diary opened as a museum in 1960. (Compiled by Dennis Johnson from various library resources, museums, Anne Frank websites and the book “Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary.”)

 

Anne Frank’s diary

Holocaust victim’s writings reflect indomitability of the human spirit

Commentary by Colin Garrett

U.S. Army Garrison Hessen Plans, Analysis and Integration Office

Anne Frank was one of 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis in the Second World War. Anne is world famous for her diary which she began in July 1942 while hiding from the Nazis. Translated into 67 languages, this diary has rightly become a classic of contemporary literature.

Located in central Amsterdam, the former hiding place where Anne wrote her diary is now a well-known museum, the Anne Frank House. Anne’s original diary is on display, and the museum outlines the times of the eight people hiding from the Nazis and of those who helped them.

I now live in Anne’s birthplace, Frankfurt am Main. A few blocks to the north of me is the house in which she and her family lived; a few blocks to the south is the location of the last photo of Anne in Frankfurt; a few blocks to the west of me is the old headquarters of the “IG Farben” which played a key role supplying chemicals and oil to sustain the Nazi war machinery and which made Zyklon B gas for extermination in the concentration camps. Thus, I am continuously reminded of Anne Frank’s enduring significance. Moreover, one of my most treasured possessions is a photograph of my late father in British army uniform and who fought against National Socialism in whose name Anne Frank and millions of her contemporaries were murdered. I like to think that one reason my father and millions of others combated Nazism can be simply summarized as “Anne Frank.”

When I read Anne’s diary as a young man I thought to myself, if ever there was a more convincing refutation of the absurd views of National Socialism and thorough condemnation of its cruel inhumanity, then this vivid testimony to the human spirit is it. Her diary testifies powerfully and eloquently to her intelligence, wit, inquiring mind, sense of humor, courage, enduring will to survive and the ability of the human spirit to soar even in horrible circumstances.

When reading Anne’s diary it is often hard to remember that these are the writings of a young teenage girl. Anne describes in November 1943 the situation of those in her secret annex: “…. as if we were a little piece of blue heaven, surrounded by heavy black rain clouds. The round, clearly defined spot where we stand is still safe, but the clouds gather more closely about us and the circle which separates us from the approaching danger closes more and more tightly. Now we are so surrounded by danger and darkness that we bump against each other, as we search desperately for a means of escape. … Oh, if only the black circle could recede and open the way for us.” This has sometimes been read as a presentiment of doom.  With the Allied armies already advancing on Holland, Anne Frank’s hiding place was betrayed. She and her family were deported in early August 1944 to concentration camps on the last deportation train from Amsterdam.

Apart from her father, the entire Frank family perished in concentration camps.  There were no ovens in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to which Anne was sent. The Nazis let starvation and disease do their work for them. That her exact date of death is not recorded testifies further to the inhumanity of the Nazi genocidal bureaucracy. Anne Frank died of typhus in late February/early March 1944 in Bergen-Belsen a few days before its liberation.

That this vivacious girl’s life should be cruelly extinguished because of absurd views of race and anti-Semitism is an appalling testimony to the destruction of reason. However, I think she would be gratified if we take to heart the moving and uplifting words she wrote only a few months before her death:

“I’ve found that there is always some beauty left — in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself, all these can help you. Look at these things and then you can find yourself and God again and regain your balance. Whoever is happy will make others happy too. And whoever has courage and faith will never perish in misery.”

 

From a diary to a dialogue

Frankfurt center invites visitors to learn more about the life and times of Anne Frank, discuss links to contemporary issues

By Karl Weisel

U.S. Army Garrison Hessen Public Affairs Office

     For decades people of many nationalities were drawn to a modest building in Frankfurt renowned for its outstanding productions of classic and cutting edge theater. While the Frankfurt Playhouse is long gone — a victim of transformation of U.S. forces in Frankfurt in the mid-‘90s — a new venue brings people of various backgrounds together at the same location.

Where the Frankfurt Military Community Headquarters and Frankfurt Playhouse once resided, now stands a memorial to Anne Frank in the form of an exhibition and seminar center. The Jugend-begegnungsstätte Anne Frank at Hansaalle 150 (across the street from U.S. Consulate Housing) invites visitors to explore the people and history of Anne Frank’s short life, to share experiences with others and examine ways in which to promote human rights on a daily basis.

“The whole concept of the exhibition is that it is very interactive,” said Birthe Pater, a museum facilitator. School groups in particular are invited to visit the center.

“We recommend it for sixth-graders and above,” said Pater, explaining that a typical two-hour to two-and-a-half hour visit starts with a short introduction explaining the workings of the interactive exhibits which include films, recordings, photos, artifacts, computer aids and written materials. “We start with a historical background and an education in democracy.”

Students can view film footage from World War II; listen to radio broadcasts by Winston Churchill, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adolf Hitler; read descriptions of the people in Anne Frank’s life; get a sense of what it was like to live in the close confines of the Amsterdam hideaway; look at propaganda posters and browse through a copy of Anne’s diary.

“We try to make the visitors understand the connection with what happened in Europe under National Socialism to today. Sometimes we’ll have a class that is very interested in the subject and has read Anne Frank’s diary and other times we’ll have a school class where the students don’t know much about that period of history at all,” said Pater.

Holocaust education

“The concept is Holocaust education,” she said, explaining that the widespread accessibility of Anne Frank’s diary is a good starting point for a discussion on contemporary human rights issues. “We want to encourage critical, thinking human beings in a society — that it’s important to consider it may not always be right to simply follow the rules, but also to become politically active as well. I think this is also important in regards to anti-racism and immigration issues. … Democracy needs people who are interested in politics.

“We ask first if there are problems in the class such as racism and then we discuss that,” said Pater, explaining that initiating a dialogue is one of the goals of the center.

Pater added that the Anne Frank center is closely aligned with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Center in Berlin. “We’ve also tried to establish a network with the Jewish museums in Frankfurt,” she said.

During a visit to the center one learns the Frank family was betrayed in Amsterdam and turned over to the Nazis only a few weeks before the Allies liberated Paris. Anne was one of 1019 captives sent on the last transport train to Auschwitz a month later in September 1944.

One can listen to an original BBC broadcast from June 6, 1944, as Gen. Eisenhower predicts, “great battles are ahead … together we will achieve victory” and warns members of the resistance throughout Europe not to “uprise too soon” before the “hour of your liberation is coming.”

An even earlier broadcast features Sir Winston Churchill extolling the successful offensive by British troops in Northern Africa in November 1942 — “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”

While most of the exhibition, “Anne Frank — A Girl From Germany,” is in German, center facilitators can explain the interactive displays in several languages including English, said Pater, who said she recently hosted a group of visitors from Italy.

The center is open to individual visitors Fridays through Sundays from 2-6 p.m. Group visits can be arranged for Mondays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. by calling civ (069) 560 0020 in advance of the visit.

Admission is Q4 for adults, Q2 for students and Q1.50 for members of a group. A Q40 fee is charged for a member of the staff to accompany groups during a visit.

To get to the exhibit by public transportation take the U-1, -2 or -3 to the Dornbusch station and walk two blocks down Pfadfinderweg to the entrance.

For more information about the exhibit visit www.ein-maedchen-aus-deutschland.de.