Death of Anne Frank & Her Life
in Secret Annex in the Shadow of Nazi Regime - Holocaust - World War 2

16 July 2022

Category: Nazi Victims

The 10th of May, 1940, World War 2, the Netherlands. Anne Frank was born on the 12th of June 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany to Otto and Edith Frank. Anne had also a sister, Margot Frank, who was three years her senior. Their life changed dramatically when on the 30th of January 1933, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, was appointed chancellor of Germany by the German President Paul von Hindenburg. Because of business problems and growing antisemitism, Otto Frank decided to leave Germany and move to the Netherlands.

The Second World War started on the 1st of September 1939. Anne Frank was 10 years old when Germany invaded the Netherlands on the 10th of May 1940. The life of the Franks, who were once again under Nazi domination, changed completely. On the 5th of July 1942, Margot, Anne’s sister, received a call-up to report for a so-called ‘labor camp’ in Nazi Germany. Knowing the faith of their friends and acquaintances who had been sent to such camps and never returned, the Franks did not hesitate for a moment. The next morning, they went into hiding in order to escape persecution.

Life in the secret annex

In the secret annex the family would spend long 761 days. After 7 days, the Franks were joined by the Van Pels family made up of Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter from whom Anne would receive her first kiss in the secret annex. In November, they were joined by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and family friend.

To this day, we do not know the reason for the police raid, but the hiding period came to an abrupt end on the 4th of August 1944. Dutch police officers headed by SS officer Karl Silberbauer went to investigate a tip-off that Jews were hiding in the upstairs rooms at Prinsengracht 263. From a prison in Amsterdam, they were sent to the Westerbork transit camp. After a few weeks, they were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Their train was the last one to leave Westerbork for this extermination camp located in Nazi-occupied Poland.

While Otto ended up in a camp for men, Anne, Margot and their mother Edith were sent to the labor camp for women. When in early November 1944, Anne and Margot were deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, their parents stayed behind at Auschwitz. Edith Frank died of weakness and disease on the 6th of January 1945.

Death in Bergen-Belsen

In Bergen-Belsen Anne and Margot contracted typhus. They both died in February 1945 owing to the effects of typhus, Margot first, Anne shortly afterwards. It was initially believed that the sisters died a few weeks before the camp’s liberation on the 15th of April 1945. However, it was later revealed that they may have died as early as February.

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