Another piece of the Anne Frank Story...

Anne Frank is the baby in the middle of the photo.

In Old Files, Fading Hopes of Anne Frank’s Family

On April 30, 1941, just days after a Gestapo courier may have threatened to denounce Anne Frank’s father, Otto, to the Nazis, he wrote to his close college friend Nathan Straus Jr. begging for help in getting his family out of Amsterdam and into America.

“I would not ask if conditions here would not force me to do all I can in time to be able to avoid worse,” he wrote in a letter that forms part of a 78-page stack of newly uncovered documents released yesterday. “Perhaps you remember that we have two girls. It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our own fate is of less importance.”

The rest of the article details through an exchange of letters Otto Frank's desperate struggle to save his doomed family. It is truly heartbreaking.

The series of letters only recently came to light. The papers, owned by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, had lain undisturbed in a New Jersey warehouse for nearly 30 years.

MORE RESOURCES:

Anne Frank Center
The official Anne Frank House website
Anne Frank - Who was she?


Anne Frank
(1929-1945)
"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."