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Anne Frank’s story remains one of the most powerful personal testimonies of the Holocaust. Born in 1929 in Frankfurt, Anne spent her early childhood in a Germany that was rapidly falling under Nazi rule. When persecution of Jews intensified, Otto Frank moved his family to Amsterdam, believing they would be safer there. But safety proved temporary. In May 1940, the German Army invaded the Netherlands, and anti-Jewish measures quickly tightened around every aspect of daily life. In July 1942, after receiving a notice ordering Margot Frank to report for a so-called “labor camp,” the family went into hiding inside the Secret Annex at Prinsengracht 263. For more than two years, Anne, her parents, her sister, and four others lived in cramped rooms above Otto Frank’s business, relying on a small group of loyal helpers for food, news, and hope. During this time, Anne wrote her now-famous diary, capturing her fears, dreams, and reflections with astonishing insight for a girl of her age. On 4 August 1944, the hiding place was betrayed. The occupants were arrested and deported—first to Westerbork, then to Auschwitz. Anne and Margot, Anne Frank's sister, were later transported to Bergen-Belsen, where both died in early 1945 from disease and starvation. Only Otto Frank survived the camps. After the war, he fulfilled his daughter’s wish to become a writer by publishing her diary, ensuring her voice would reach millions around the world.
#history #ww2 #holocaust
#history #ww2 #holocaust
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00:00The 10th of May, 1940, World War II, the Netherlands.
00:11Nazi Germany invades Holland, and the German air forces, the Luftwaffe, use paratroopers in the capture of tactical points and to assist in the advance of ground troops across the country.
00:21The invasion is accompanied by heavy aerial bombardment of Rotterdam and culminates in the 14th of May with the destruction of its entire historic center.
00:31Because the Germans threatened to bomb the city of Utrecht in the same way, the Dutch forces surrender one day later.
00:38Soon after, the Nazis start to occupy the whole country and pass new anti-Jewish laws, which are designed to exclude Jewish people from society and restrict their livelihood.
00:4815,000 Jews who fled from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands between 1933 and 1939 are once again under Nazi domination.
00:58One of them is a Jewish teenager who would become the world's most famous diarist, Anne Frank.
01:05Anneliese Marie Frank was born on the 12th of June 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, to Otto and Edith Frank.
01:12Anne also had a sister, Margot, who was three years her senior.
01:16The sisters had a happy childhood, playing almost every day in the garden with the children of the neighborhood.
01:22The Franks were liberal Jews and lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various religions on the outskirts of Frankfurt.
01:32Their 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.
01:44The Nazi regime quickly began to restrict the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and established the first concentration camps, imprisoning its political opponents, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others classified as dangerous.
01:58Because of business problems and growing anti-Semitism, Otto Frank decided to leave Germany and move to the Netherlands.
02:06In September 1933, he founded a franchise for the Amsterdam branch of Opector Company that traded in pectin, a gelling agent for making jam.
02:16The rest of the family moved to Amsterdam soon after.
02:19The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled from Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939.
02:28After the experiences of the Third Reich, the family soon felt at home in Amsterdam and the girls enrolled in Dutch schools.
02:35They made new friends and despite initial problems with the Dutch language, they became excellent students, especially Margot.
02:42While the girls seemed to be happy about their new life in their new country, for their parents the situation was more challenging.
02:50Otto had to work hard to get his company going and build a new life for his family.
02:55However, the financial situation of the family improved in 1938 when Otto started a new company called Pekticon, which was a wholesaler of herbs and spices.
03:04Seeing the development in Nazi Germany and its aggressive expansion, he even wanted to set up a new business in Great Britain and move there, but his plan did not work out.
03:15The Second World War started on the 1st of September 1939.
03:20Anne Frank was 10 years old when Germany invaded the Netherlands on the 10th of May 1940.
03:26The life of the Franks, who were once again under Nazi domination, changed completely.
03:31The criminal Nazi regime, from which they ran away in 1933, finally caught up with them in the country which became their new home and had made them feel free to live their own life.
03:43The Netherlands became an occupied territory, and it did not take long for the Nazis to begin introducing new anti-Semitic laws and regulations restricting the lives of Jews.
03:53Jewish civil servants were fired, and Jewish businesses as well as the Jews themselves had to be registered.
03:59They could no longer visit parks, cinemas, or non-Jewish shops.
04:04Many places thus became off-limits to Anne, who could no longer go to the same school, as all Jewish children had to go to separate Jewish schools.
04:13According to new laws, Jews were no longer allowed to run their own businesses, and the Nazis forced Otto Frank to give up his companies.
04:21However, Otto had managed to transfer control of his businesses to his employees soon enough to keep his companies out of Nazi hands.
04:30The situation got worse in 1941, when Jewish men were arrested during raids and then deported to Mauthausen concentration camp.
04:38Among them were friends and acquaintances of the Franks, and reports of their deaths were soon to follow.
04:45Otto understood that the situation was critical, and tried to emigrate to the United States and Cuba.
04:51However, he never managed to obtain the necessary documents.
04:54It was in the spring of 1942, when Otto Frank, anticipating deportation of his own family, decided to set up a hiding place in an empty part of his business premises at Prinzegracht 263.
05:08Regulations, which forced Jews to wear a yellow badge in the form of the Star of David as a means of identification, were announced in the Netherlands on the 29th of April, 1942.
05:18Those caught without a badge, after the 5th of May, when they came into effect, were arrested and detained for a six-week period.
05:26The systematic deportation of Dutch Jews to the death camps started in the summer of 1942.
05:33Transportes regularly left the transit camps of Westerbork and Fucht.
05:37Out of 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands by the beginning of the Second World War,
05:42107,000, including little children, were deported mostly for Auschwitz and Sobibor by September 1944.
05:51Out of the 107,000, only 5,000 returned after the war.
05:58Before going into hiding, the 12th of June 1942 was probably the last happy moment for the Frank family.
06:04It was the day when Anne celebrated her 13th birthday and received her diary.
06:10A diary which would one day make her famous and in which she would write about her feelings and thoughts during the difficult times that were to come.
06:19Less than one month later, 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.
06:28Knowing the fate of their friends and acquaintances who had been sent to such camps and never returned, the Franks did not hesitate for a moment.
06:37The next morning, they went into hiding in order to escape persecution.
06:42In the secret annex, the family would spend a long 761 days.
06:48After seven days, the Franks were joined by the Van Pels family, made up of Hermann, August, and 16-year-old Peter, from whom Anne would receive her first kiss in the secret annex.
06:58In November, they were joined by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and family friend.
07:04It is in Anne's diary, thanks to which we know how the Frank family and four others lived for more than two years in a three-story space, entered through a revolving bookcase.
07:13The people in hiding were completely dependent on six helpers.
07:18They were employees and friends of Anne's father, who provided food, clothing, and everything necessary to the eight people in the secret annex between 1942 and 1944.
07:28Writing helped Anne pass the time, and it's thanks to her diary, that we can get a glimpse into the everyday life of the people in hiding.
07:37It was important to be silent, especially from 8.30 a.m., when the men in the warehouse, which was located below the secret annex, started their workday.
07:46Any sound could cause suspicion.
07:48The morning was devoted to reading, studying, and preparing for their lunch break.
07:53At 12.30 p.m., when the warehouse workers went home for lunch, a few of the helpers came up to the secret annex to have lunch with those in hiding.
08:01Miep Gis usually stayed in the office to keep an eye on things.
08:05The people in hiding could see other faces and listen to Radio Urania, which was a program broadcasted by the BBC, where the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, who on the 13th of May, 1940, had escaped from the invading German troops and traveled to England, spoke 34 times during the course of the war.
08:24While in the afternoon, some people in hiding took a nap, Anne used to write or study.
08:28Then they had a coffee, prepared dinner, and at 5.30 p.m., when the warehouse workers went home, the people in hiding could leave the secret annex and spread out through the building.
08:39They would cook dinner and took turns using the bathroom, as they did in the morning, before the warehouse workers started their working day.
08:46The situation became more dangerous after September 1942, when special units were formed made up of Dutch collaborators that began hunting for hiding Jews.
08:56An estimated 25,000 Jews went into hiding in the Netherlands.
09:01Two-thirds of them survived, and one-third were betrayed and discovered.
09:06The eight people in the secret annex belonged to the latter group.
09:10To 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.
09:17Dutch police officers, headed by SS officer Karl Silberbauer, went to investigate a tip-off that Jews were hiding in the upstairs rooms at Prinserach 263.
09:30The hiding place had been discovered, and Otto and the others were arrested.
09:34While Silberbauer confiscated their valuables and money, he scattered out the papers and notebooks.
09:40After people from the secret annex were taken to the Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam, two other helpers took the documents before the secret annex was emptied by the Order of the Nazis.
09:50Anne's diary and other manuscripts survived.
09:53From a prison in Amsterdam, they were sent to the Westerbork transit camp.
09:58They ended up in the prison barracks, and the men and women were separated.
10:01Otto had to work during the day, but in the evening he could be with Ierdot, Margot and Anne.
10:08After a few weeks, they were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
10:13Their train was the last one to leave Westerbork for this extermination camp located in Nazi-occupied Poland.
10:20The train journey took three horrible days, during which Anne and over a thousand others were packed closely together in cattle wagons.
10:28There was little food and water, and only a barrel for a toilet.
10:32Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Nazi doctors checked to see who would and who would not be able to do heavy-forced labor.
10:39Around 350 people from Anne's transport were immediately taken to the gas chambers and murdered.
10:46While Otto ended up in the camp for men, Anne, Margot, and their mother Ierdot were sent to the labor camp for women.
10:52After the war, survivors described them as an inseparable trio.
10:58Otto would never see them again.
11:01When in early November 1944, Anne and Margot were deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, their parents stayed behind at Auschwitz.
11:09Ierdot died of weakness and disease on the 6th of January 1945, three weeks before the Red Army liberated the camp.
11:17At Bergen-Belsen, Anne reunited with her friend, Nanetta Blitz, who survived the Holocaust and described Anne as bald, emaciated, and shivering.
11:27She added that Anne did not wish to live any longer, as she believed her parents were both dead.
11:34Anne also did tell her that she hoped to one day write a book based on the diary after the war would be over.
11:40Sanitary conditions were terrible, and there was no water for washing, and hardly enough for drinking and cooking.
11:48Between January and March 1945, when the prisoners were sent on death marches from the other concentration camps,
11:55about one-third of the prisoners who arrived in the transports were already dead,
11:59and almost 80% of the rest had to be fetched by truck from the station, as they were too weak and sick to walk.
12:06On one occasion, out of a transport of 1,900 inmates, over 500 arrived dead.
12:14The prisoners got almost no food during these death marches, and there was no food when they arrived at the camp either.
12:21The camp was so overcrowded that during the winter months when it was freezing cold,
12:25the prisoners had to sleep in a sitting position on the floor,
12:28and somehow try to share only 200 blankets in a camp of tens of thousands of prisoners.
12:33Due to starvation, thirst, and the outbreak of typhus epidemics,
12:39the average daily mortality rate of the prisoners was between 250 and 300.
12:45In these terrible conditions, Anne and Margot contracted typhus as well.
12:50After the war, Gena Turgel, a survivor of Begg and Belsen who worked in the camp hospital and knew Anne,
12:56remembered seeing her and in her own words said that Anne was delirious, terrible, and burning up.
13:02She also brought Anne water with which to wash.
13:06But unfortunately, Anne and her sister did not survive.
13:11After Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock, Anne died one day later.
13:17They both died in February 1945, owing to the effects of typhus, Margot first, and Anne shortly afterwards.
13:28It was initially believed that the sisters died a few weeks before the camp's liberation, on the 15th of April 1945.
13:34However, it was later revealed that they may have died as early as February.
13:39Anne and Margot are among the millions of victims who were sentenced to death by starvation,
13:44thirst, illnesses, ill-treatment, or extermination with Zyklon B gas.
13:51However, there was one person from the secret annex who survived.
13:55It was Otto, Anne's father.
13:58He was liberated on the 27th of January 1945, when the Soviets entered Auschwitz.
14:05On the way back to the Netherlands, he found out that his wife, Irid, had died,
14:09but he hoped that Anne and Margot had somehow survived.
14:13He returned to the liberated Netherlands on the 3rd of June 1945,
14:17nine days before what would have been Anne's 16th birthday.
14:22All hope was lost when one month later he learned about the death of his daughters.
14:27Miep Ghis, one of the helpers of the secret annex, passed him Anne's diary.
14:32After he found enough courage to read it, he was astonished by her writing.
14:36He also read about Anne's dreams to become a writer and journalist,
14:40and her intention to publish her stories about their life in the secret annex after the war would be over.
14:47In the end, Anne's dreams would come true.
14:50First, 3,000 copies of her book, Secret Annex, were published in 1947.
14:56Since then, the book has been translated into over 70 languages.
15:00People all over the world were introduced to Anne's story,
15:03and in 1960, the hiding place, which for two years became the home to eight people
15:08who tried to survive the atrocities of the criminal Nazi regime,
15:12became a museum, the Anne Frank House.
15:15Today, you can even visit her room that has walls brightened with picture postcards
15:20and movie stars which Anne collected,
15:22and see her original diary and other manuscripts, which she wrote until her arrest.
15:27Anne Frank, a teenage girl who perished in a death camp
15:31and whose only sin was that she was a Jew,
15:34has become a symbol which will live forever
15:36and will always remind us of the dangers of discrimination and racism
15:40and hatred towards each other.
15:43To the end, Anne Frank, a teenage girl who perished in a death camp
15:43among all the priests, which she said to her.
15:47To the end and for a woman who perished in a time in a death camp
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