A Diary Unfinished:

Anne Franks Last Days

Then on August 4, 1944, Anne, along with her father Otto and the others, entered
into a fate they long feared. Between 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., they heard a car
pull up in front of 263 Prinsengracht. Several men emerged from the car. First was
an SS Sergeant, Karl Josef Silberbauer, in his Nazi uniform, and three others
members of the Dutch Security Police, in plain clothes, but armed. They pounded on
the front door, eventually breaking it in. Holding Kugler at gunpoint, they forced him
to lead them up the stairs to the bookcase. Using axes, they broke the bookcase
apart, giving way to the stairs to the secret annex. Meanwhile, Otto and the others
gathered up what belongings they could carry. The SS Sergeant, arriving at the
annex, arrested the eight people found there. Each person was allowed to bring one
case of belongings, only. Anne had stored all the pages of her diary in her father's
briefcase. Following their arrest, the authorities emptied the briefcase on the floor,
scattering Anne's papers. They did this, as they used this briefcase to carry all the
money, jewellery and other valuables they found.

It is believed that those in hiding were betrayed by one of the new warehousemen,
who perhaps was curious about the upper floors in the house. As the Nazis paid a
bounty for each Jew turned in, this was probably the case. However, later, although
this man was investigated, he was never charged with any crime.

What did happen to Anne and those other members of her family and the others in
hiding with her?

Anne and the seven others arrested were first taken to a prison in Amsterdam, then
transferred to Westerbork, a transit camp for Jews in northern Holland. On
September 3, 1944, they were placed on the last transport train to leave
Westerbork, arriving three days later at Auschwitz, Poland. Auschwitz was a
concentration and extermination camp. It is located in upper Silesia, Poland, thirty-
seven miles west of Krakow, Poland. It was established in 1942 and consisted of
three major camps. Auschwitz I was the main camp; Auschwitz II, known as
Birkenau, was the extermination camp, and Auschwitz III was the labour camp, also
called Buna. Additionally, Auschwitz had other sub-camps.

Hermann van Pels was gassed to death at Auschwitz in November 1944; his wife,
Auguste van Pels was taken from Auschwitz to Bergen_Belsen, and from there to
Theresienstadt on April 9, 1945. From here it appeared as though she was sent to
another concentration camp, and it is certain that she did not survive, although the
date is unknown; Peter van Pels (their son) was forced to take part in a "death
march," from Auschwitz to Mauthausen, Austria, where he died on May 5, 1945,
three days before the camp was liberated; Fritz Pfeffer (whom Anne referred to as
Albert Dussel) died on December 20, 1944 in the Neuengamme concentration camp.
Edith Frank died on January 6, 1945 at Auschwitz_Birkenau from hunger and
exhaustion.

Anne and her sister Margot were transported from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen in
October 1944. During the winter of 1944_45, Anne and Margot were just two of the
three thousand six-hundred fifty-nine women transported this date, in a cattle car.
Upon arriving at Bergen-Belsen, the conditions were merciless. This camp was a
barren tract of mud. During the cold, wet fall and winter that followed, Anne and
Margot, and the others, suffered through the cold nights on wet, usually flooded
straw in overcrowded tents, surrounded by latrine ditches.

During the winter, most of the tents were destroyed by a terrible hailstorm, leaving
little if any shelter. Weakened by the brutality of the Nazis, combined with hunger
and exposure, as well as insufficiently clothed, and tormented by lice, as well as the
typhus epidemic that befell the camp, more than fifty-thousand men and women
died. Margot Frank died in late February 1945, at age nineteen, and Anne, age
fifteen, died a few days later in early March, one month before the camp was
liberated, both falling victim to typhus.

Of the eight, only Otto Frank survived. Following the liberation of Auschwitz by
Russian troops, he was repatriated to Amsterdam by way Odessa and Marseille. Upon
Otto's return to Amsterdam, he was given Anne's diary by Miep Gies, that she had
hidden for almost a year. He arrived back home in Amsterdam on June 3, 1945, and
stayed there until 1953, when he moved to Basel, Switzerland, where his sister and
her family, and later on his brother lived. He remarried a lady originally from Vienna
named Elfriede Geiringer, who also survived Auschwitz. Otto Frank died on August
19, 1980. Until that time, he devoted his life to sharing his daughter's diary with
the world.

Anne Franks only crime was the she was born Jewish.