Anne Frank

Arrest

-On the morning of 4 August 1944, the Achterhuis was stormed by German uniformed police following a tip from an informer who was never identified. Led by SS-Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer of the Security Service, the group included at least three members of the Security Police. The Franks, van Pelses, and Pfeffer were taken to Gestapo headquarters, where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5 August they were transferred to the Huis van Bewaring (House of Detention), an overcrowded prison on the Weteringschans. Two days later they were transported to the Westerbork transit camp, through which by that time more than 100,000 Jews, mostly Dutch and German, had passed. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and were sent to the Punishment Barracks for hard labor.

-At around 10 a.m. on Friday 4 August 1944, the warehouseman of Prinsengracht 263, Willem van Maaren, was met by a uniformed German officer, Karl Silberbauer, and several plain-clothed Dutch policemen. While one of the policemen stayed with van Maaren in the warehouse, the others made their way to the first floor above where they found Victor Kugler (Kraler) in his office at the rear of the building, and Miep Gies (Miep), Bep Voskuijl (Elli), and Johannes Kleiman (Koophuis) in theirs at the front. They were instructed to stay in the room but in the confusion that followed, Bep managed to escape with a few documents which would have incriminated their black market contacts. Kugler was instructed by Silberbauer to accompany him and the policemen on a search of the building and, after investigating the storerooms on the second floor of the front building, the officers took him to the first floor of the rear building, to the corridor in front of the hiding place. In the meantime, Miep was told at gunpoint to stay where she was while Silberbauer searched the building.

Deportation and death

On 3 September 1944, the group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and arrived after a three-day journey. In the chaos that marked the unloading of the trains, the men were forcibly separated from the women and children, and Otto Frank was wrenched from his family. Of the 1,019 passengers, 549—including all children younger than 15—were sent directly to the gas chambers. Anne had turned 15 three months earlier and was one of the youngest people to be spared from her transport. She was soon made aware that most people were gassed upon arrival, and never learned that the entire group from the Achterhuis had survived this selection. She reasoned that her father, in his mid-fifties and not particularly robust, had been killed immediately after they were separated.

With the other females not selected for immediate death, Anne was forced to strip naked to be disinfected, had her head shaved and was tattooed with an identifying number on her arm. By day, the women were used as slave labour and Anne was forced to haul rocks and dig rolls of sod; by night, they were crammed into overcrowded barracks. Some witnesses later testified Anne became withdrawn and tearful when she saw children being led to the gas chambers; others reported that more often she displayed strength and courage. Her gregarious and confident nature allowed her to obtain extra bread rations for her mother, sister, and herself. Disease was rampant; before long, Anne's skin became badly infected by scabies. The Frank sisters were moved into an infirmary, which was in a state of constant darkness and infested with rats and mice. Edith Frank stopped eating, saving every morsel of food for her daughters and passing her rations to them through a hole she made at the bottom of the infirmary wall.

In October 1944 the Frank women were slated to join a transport to the Liebau labour camp in Upper Silesia. Bloeme Evers-Emden was slated to be on this transport. But Anne was prohibited from going because she had developed scabies, and her mother and sister opted to stay with her.

On 28 October selections began for women to be relocated to Bergen-Belsen. More than 8,000 women, including Anne and Margot Frank and Auguste van Pels, were transported. Edith Frank

...