July 6 - The Frank Family Go Into Hiding

This Day in History: 6 July 2020

 

6 July 1942

 

78 years ago, today, Anne Frank and her family took refuge inside a secret, sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. Fearing deportation to a Nazi concentration camp, Anne's father, Otto Frank, approached his bookkeeper, Miep Gies. He asked if she would help to hide his family and asked his employees as well if they would help. They agreed, and risked their lives to smuggle food, supplies and news into the 'Secret Annex'. During the next two years, Anne would keep a diary describing her everyday experiences, her relationships and observations about the dangerous world around her.

 

In August 1944, the Frank's 'Secret Annex' was discovered by the Nazi Gestapo. The family was sent to Nazi concentration camps, with the two Christian employees that had helped them. They were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, but in early 1945, Anne and her sister, Margot, were moved to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Sadly, after suffering the lethal conditions, the two sisters caught typhus and died. After the war, Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam following his release from Auschwitz. He was given Anne's notebooks and loose papers containing her writings that Miep Gies had hidden in her desk. 'The Diary of Anne Frank' was published in Dutch in 1947, and in English in 1952, serving as a literary testament to the Jews who were silenced in the Holocaust.

 

Want to find out more about Anne Frank's life and experiences? Click here for more information, or here for more on who betrayed the Frank family.