On August 4, 1944, German and Dutch police raided the secret annex at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. Eight people who had been hiding there for over two years were arrested and deported to concentration camps. Among them were Anne Frank, her sister Margot, their mother Edith, and their father Otto. Within nine months, seven of the eight were dead. Otto Frank survived.
The Frank family had fled Germany in 1933 after Hitler came to power. Otto moved his wife and two daughters to Amsterdam, hoping the Netherlands would remain neutral. For several years, they built a new life. Otto established a business selling pectin and spices, and the girls attended school and made friends.
On May 10, 1940, German forces invaded the Netherlands. The occupation brought systematic persecution of Dutch Jews, and by 1942, deportations to concentration camps had begun. On July 5, 1942, Margot Frank received a call-up notice ordering her to report for a German work camp. The next day, the family went into hiding in a concealed annex behind Otto’s business office.
They were joined by the Van Pels family and later by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist. Four of Otto’s employees knew about the hidden residence and provided food, supplies, and news from the outside world. For 25 months, the eight people lived in near total silence during working hours.
Anne, who was 13 when the family went into hiding, began keeping a diary. She wrote about fear, boredom, arguments, and small moments of hope. She documented her changing relationships with her parents, her growing affection for Peter Van Pels, and her reflections on identity and war. On July 15, 1944, less than three weeks before the raid, she wrote that despite everything, she still believed people were truly good at heart.
The betrayal came without warning. Historians still debate who informed the authorities, and the betrayer’s identity has never been definitively proven. The eight residents were arrested and taken to SD headquarters in Amsterdam. Two days later, they were transferred to the Westerbork transit camp.
On September 3, 1944, the eight were loaded onto the last transport to leave Westerbork for Auschwitz. The train carried 1,019 people and took three days to reach the camp. Upon arrival, SS doctors separated those deemed fit for labor from those sent directly to the gas chambers. Of the 1,019 people on that transport, 549 were murdered within hours.
Otto was selected for labor and assigned to the men’s barracks. Edith, Margot, and Anne were also selected for labor and sent to the women’s section. Herman Van Pels was gassed on arrival. Otto later described Auschwitz as a place where the living became numbers.
In late October 1944, Anne and Margot were selected for transport to Bergen-Belsen. Edith remained at Auschwitz. Edith Frank died there on January 6, 1945, weakened by starvation and illness. Witnesses later told Otto that she had stopped eating, saving her food for her daughters, not knowing they had already been taken away.
At Bergen-Belsen, conditions were catastrophic. Typhus spread rapidly, and both Anne and Margot contracted the disease. In late February or early March 1945, both sisters died within days of each other. Margot was 19. Anne was 15. Their bodies were buried in one of the camp’s mass graves.
Otto survived Auschwitz. Soviet forces liberated the camp on January 27, 1945. During his recovery, he searched desperately for information about his family. The journey back to Amsterdam took months, and he reached the city in early June 1945.
Otto returned to the apartment of Miep and Jan Gies, two of the employees who had helped hide the family. Miep had been a lifeline during the hiding, bringing food, books, and news. When Otto appeared at their door, gaunt and hollow-eyed, Miep broke down.
Otto was certain his daughters were alive somewhere. He spent weeks searching for information, writing letters to aid organizations and the Red Cross. In July 1945, he received confirmation that Edith had died at Auschwitz. Then a Dutch woman who had been imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen returned to Amsterdam and told Otto that both girls had died of typhus shortly before the camp’s liberation.
The news devastated Otto. He was 56 years old and alone. He told friends he felt as though he were living in a fog.
It was during these weeks of grief that Miep gave Otto something she had been keeping since the arrest. After the raid, Miep and another helper had returned to the annex and found papers scattered on the floor. Among them were Anne’s diary, a red and white checkered autograph book, and loose sheets of paper with additional stories and observations.
Miep gathered all the papers, intending to return them to Anne when she came back. She had not read them, fearing it would be an invasion of Anne’s privacy. When she learned Anne was dead, she brought the papers to Otto. She said, “Here is your daughter Anne’s legacy to you.”
Otto could not speak. He took the papers to his room and sat alone for hours. When he finally began to read, he was overwhelmed. He later said he had no idea Anne had been writing so extensively or that her thoughts had been so mature.
Anne had written on April 5, 1944, that she wanted to go on living even after her death. She had hoped her diary would be published someday. Otto decided to honor that wish.
Finding a publisher took time. Several rejected the manuscript, questioning whether there was an audience for a young girl’s diary. Finally, in 1947, a Dutch publishing house agreed to release the book. It was published on June 25, 1947, under the title “Het Achterhuis,” meaning “The Secret Annex.” The first edition printed 3,000 copies.
The book began to sell steadily in the Netherlands. By 1950, it had sold over 100,000 copies in Dutch. The German translation appeared in 1950, and the English translation, titled “The Diary of a Young Girl,” was published in the United States in 1952.
The diary’s publication sparked controversy in some quarters. In Germany, some questioned its authenticity. Otto responded by providing handwriting experts and historians with access to the original documents. Forensic analysis confirmed the handwriting was Anne’s.
In 1955, a play adaptation opened on Broadway. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. Otto attended the Broadway premiere on October 5, 1955. In 1959, a film adaptation directed by George Stevens was released, reaching millions of viewers worldwide.
Otto remarried in 1953 to Elfriede Geiringer, a fellow Auschwitz survivor whose daughter and husband had also perished in the camps. They moved to Basel, Switzerland, where they could live more anonymously.
Otto devoted the rest of his life to preserving his daughter’s legacy and promoting education about the Holocaust. He received thousands of letters from readers around the world. He responded personally to as many as he could.
One of his most significant efforts was the preservation of the annex itself. By the mid-1950s, there were plans to demolish the building. Otto and Dutch citizens concerned about preserving the site campaigned to save it. In 1957, the Anne Frank Foundation was established to acquire and restore the property.
On May 3, 1960, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands officially opened the Anne Frank House to the public as a museum. Visitors could walk through the annex, climb the stairs behind the bookcase that had concealed the entrance, and stand in the space where Anne had written her diary.
Otto remained closely involved with the Anne Frank House for the rest of his life. He insisted the museum should be an educational institution dedicated to promoting human rights and combating prejudice.
He was also vigilant in protecting the diary’s integrity. He took legal action against publishers who printed unauthorized editions and fought against Holocaust deniers who claimed the diary was a fabrication.
In 1986, a critical edition of the diary was published, presenting all three versions: Anne’s original diary, her revised version, and the version Otto had edited for publication. This allowed readers to see the development of Anne’s writing.
Otto established the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, a foundation that would hold the copyright to Anne’s writings and use proceeds to fund charitable causes. He wanted Anne’s words to continue making a difference long after he was gone.
Otto Frank died in Basel on August 19, 1980, at the age of 91. He had lived for 35 years after the war, dedicating those years to preserving Anne’s memory. At his request, part of his ashes were scattered at the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
In the decades since Otto’s death, Anne’s diary has been translated into more than 70 languages and has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. The Anne Frank House attracts over a million visitors each year.
Anne Frank was not a political leader or a public figure. She was an ordinary teenager who wanted to be a writer, who argued with her parents, who experienced first love, and who dreamed of a future that would never come. Her words resonate because they are personal.
The diary also serves as a reminder of what was lost. Anne Frank had talent, intelligence, and ambition. She was murdered at 15, her potential erased. The same is true for the one and a half million Jewish children who were killed in the Holocaust.
Otto Frank’s decision to publish the diary ensured that Anne’s voice would not be silenced by her death. His tireless work in the decades that followed gave that voice a platform and a purpose. He transformed a private teenager’s diary into a public testament.
The Anne Frank House continues to address contemporary issues of discrimination, refugees, and human rights. The foundation has expanded its mission to actively combat antisemitism, racism, and other forms of intolerance.
Recent scholarship has brought new dimensions to the Frank family story. In 2022, a team of investigators concluded that the most likely betrayer was Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish notary who may have given up the hiding place to save his own family. Those findings remain disputed.
Otto Frank’s legacy is inseparable from his daughter’s. By publishing the diary, by fighting for its authenticity, and by establishing the institutions that preserve and promote it, he ensured that Anne’s death would not be in vain. He gave meaning to his own survival by dedicating himself to her memory.
The story of the Frank family after World War II is ultimately a story about the power of words. Anne Frank wrote because she wanted to be heard. Otto Frank published those words because he believed they could make a difference. And readers around the world have responded because they recognize in them something essential about what it means to be human.