On June 12, 1942, a young girl received a diary for her 13th birthday.

The gift was given during one of the most
turbulent and bloody chapters in modern history.

Just a decade before a terrifying
force had been unleashed in Germany, the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, took…

power and   began to systematically persecute
the German Jewish population.

It was really very scary to go out in
the street to do your shopping and many, many people disappeared.

many were arrested.

Forced emigration, imprisonment and murder were becoming daily
threats for Jews and as World War II broke out and Hitler gained more and
more territory in Europe.

Those Jews who fled persecution found
themselves under threat once again, unable to escape.

After several weeks and months, the measures against the Jewish
population started to bite.

She was not allowed to go into parks, she was not allowed to go to the movies, she was not allowed to.

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use public transport, which was a very visible measure also
in terms of the persecution of the Jews.

The girl in receipt of the diary was Anne Frank, a young German Jew who had fled with
her family from Frankfurt in 1933, but now found herself trapped
in occupied Amsterdam.

For some she is a victim, for some she is a source of inspiration, for some she is a brilliant writer.

As she put pen to paper to record her experience, She could never have envisaged that it would lead   to one of the most well-known works
of literature the world has ever seen.

People said, well,
who is interested in a diary of a young girl? Nor could she have realized that it would also
be the document to a harrowing and ultimately   tragic story of persecution inflicted on a child
who had become the symbol of millions of others.

I’m very impressed with you, Mr.

Nolan.

It’s a remarkable fact that a
book has been able to inspire.

so many people in so many different ways.

Through her, of course, the world is learning about what has happened.

The story of Eva Schloss, also an immigrant to Amsterdam, would run in parallel to that of Anne Frank.

She could not have imagined, however, how inextricably their lives would be linked.

One day a little girl came
to me and introduced herself, and she said it was Anne Frank.

Separately, Eva and Anne would spend two years hiding
from the constant threat of the Nazis.

These two young girls would
share similar experiences, but their lives would have
very different outcomes.

There are one and a half
million children murdered, but if you talk about that, people can’t imagine.

So Anne has become a symbol for all
those one and a half million victims.

Eva survived to tell her story.

but the legacy Anne Frank left
would end up having a global impact.

In the Holocaust, Anne has become the most
important victim actually.

Anne was born to a German Jewish family.

Her father’s family had lived in
Frankfurt for seven generations.

They were very culturalized.

They were very settled in Frankfurt.

Her mother was Edith Hollander, also from a Jewish family.

Anne’s father was Otto Frank, seventh generation German Jew, who had actually fought in the First World
War and been decorated with the Iron Cross.

Three years before Anne was born, her sister Margot was born.

Anne was born on the 12th of June 1929.

She was a pretty normal girl
growing up in a German family.

The lives were very much like
kids live their lives today, playing in the street, going to birthday parties, a very normal childhood.

In 1933, the Nazi Party seized power in Germany.

Hitler’s antisemitism meant that Jewish
persecution was implemented immediately, and the very normal childhood experience by Anne and thousands of other Jewish children
in Germany would be changed forever.

She came with her family to the
Netherlands in the beginning of 1934.

Nuremberg laws were introduced and life became
increasingly difficult for German Jewish families.

All books of Jewish authors are
ordered burned in the public squares.

Authors, scientists, artists are driven from Germany.

1600 have fled to Holland.

12,000 to France.

1200 to Spain.

Three thousand to Czechoslovakia.

The Franks chose to move to Holland
and in 1934 arrived in Amsterdam.

Otto knew people in the city and
went originally himself to start, see if he could find work, start a business, which he did.

Anne and Margot both enrolled in Dutch schools and
both seemed to adapt well to life in Amsterdam.

Basically she was.

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Raised as a Dutch girl in the 30s, went to school.

She was fond of reading.

She read a lot of books.

She was actually quite precocious, though,
for a 13-year-old and quite self-absorbed.

She was the chatterbox in the class and
always getting into trouble with the teacher.

The family quickly settled
into their new surroundings.

The Netherlands became their home and a
normal life could once again be resumed.

Throughout the 1930s Hitler made several
territory gains in Europe, one being the Anschluss in Austria in 1938.

Eva Schloss, a child living in Vienna at the time, found herself having to move.

I was born in Vienna in 1929 and I had an older
brother who was three years older than me.

We were a very happy family
there and all this ended up   abruptly when the Nazis came in and we were.

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lucky enough to be able to get out in time.

They first fled to Belgium before
finally settling in Amsterdam, another Jewish family fleeing from persecution.

Amsterdam was a lovely city.

The people were very welcoming to refugees.

I went back to school.

I got a bicycle.

We were together again as a family.

And it looked as if life was going to
get back to some kind of normality.

The years in Amsterdam before
1940 were very peaceful, very normal, and they felt that they had found
a haven of safety from the Nazis.

We moved onto the Merwedeplein, a modern square in Amsterdam.

Well,
it was actually more a triangle.

The apartments were on both sides, and it was a big open space where all the
local children came to play after school.

And one day a little girl.

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came to me and introduced herself
and she said it was Anna Frank.

We were 11 when we met.

I was more a tomboy.

I liked to play with the boys and
as well tricks on the bicycle.

And Anna was more sophisticated little girl, interested in her clothes, in hairstyles, in film stars and as well in boys already.

She said Her family comes from Germany and
I couldn’t speak much Dutch yet.

So she took me up to her
apartment and I met her family.

During this meeting between Ava and
Anne on the square of the Merwedeplan, neither would be able to comprehend how
their lives were going to be intertwined and their idyllic life in Amsterdam
would soon be turned upside down.

They chose Amsterdam because
in the First World War, Holland was neutral.

And they felt that.

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there would be a refuge for
Jewish people in Holland.

Unfortunately, in May 1940, the Germans invaded that country as well.

Towns and villages were in flames as the
invaders rolled on at a breathless pace, encircling the defenders
and slashing their armies, destroying in the name of a new order the homes
and shops of those who had dared to resist.

The Nazi machine broke the back
of Dutch resistance in four days.

After the occupation of the
Netherlands in May 1940, life seemed to stay pretty normal
and pretty much the same as before.

Life continued, but I must say we were afraid what would happen.

And after several weeks and months, the measures against the Jewish
population started to bite.

Jews not wanted.

Jews keep out.

Even in parks, if Jews are allowed at all, special yellow benches are set apart, labeled for Jews.

She was not allowed to go into.

.

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parks, she was not allowed to go to movies, she was not allowed to use public transport.

Not theater, swimming pools, those were things which upset us children.

And then we had to leave our school
and we had to wear yellow star.

Which was a very visible measure also
in terms of the persecution of the Jews.

And then they started to arrest people, especially young people, male.

So it was really very scary to go out in the
street to do your shopping or anything like that.

And many, many people disappeared in 1941.

Many, many were arrested.

The turmoil and persecution faced by the Jews
in Amsterdam was beginning to become unbearable, but it would be a letter sent to all Jewish   youths which would decide the
fates of both Anne and Eber.

After two years, in July 1942, about 10,000 young people got a call-up notice to be deported to Germany to
work in German factories.

My brother Heinz, who was 16 at the time, and Anna Sister Margot and many, many others of their friends
got this call-up notice.

Many parents sent their young people, but they didn’t end up in
Germany working in factories.

They were sent to Mauthausen
and just murdered there.

So it was very, very difficult, but nothing, of course, what was going to follow up.

What came next would see tragedy
beyond compare for Eber and Anne.

Both their lives would play out to
the backdrop of war and mass genocide.

The takeover of Germany by the Nazi regime in 1933
and the subsequent occupation of the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia forced much of the Jewish
population to emigrate to avoid persecution.

The Netherlands was one of many countries that
took in Jews from persecuted areas of Europe, and both the families of
Anne Frank and subsequently   Eva Schloss would establish their home there.

Unlike World War I, where they remained neutral, Holland would find itself in
Nazi-occupied territory in 1940, and once again the Jews who had fled persecution found themselves the persecuted.

Life for both Ava and Anne
would become increasingly hard, but it would be a letter sent to their older siblings which would have
irreversible consequences.

That was the time that my father
and Otto Frank and many other parents decided they wouldn’t send their children, but they would go into hiding.

Well,
they tried to leave the impression that they
had to leave for Switzerland, where the family of Anne’s father lived.

Otto decided because where he worked
was a warehouse with rooms above.

The annex to the house was pretty much unused, so it was an empty space.

These annexes, they are a common feature in Amsterdam.

There were lots of sort of staircases and rooms
at the back that could be easily obscured.

So he started making plans in 1942 that should there be an eventuality, the family would.

go into hiding.

Now it came more suddenly than he had anticipated.

After Ava’s brother had received his letter, Ava’s father, like Otto Frank, would decide that hiding would be the only option.

Without having prepared a hiding place, Ava’s family would have to seek an alternative
method which would see her family divided.

We had to split up.

Nobody wanted to take a family of four.

So I went with my mother and my father
and mother went to a different hiding.

place.

Anne Frank and her family entered the
hiding place at 263 Prinsengracht on July 6, 1942.

A few weeks later, the Van Pels moved in.

Herman Van Pels was Otto Frank’s business partner.

His wife August and their son Peter
all joined the Franks in the annex.

The last person to enter
the annex was Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist from Berlin who emigrated to the
Netherlands after the Kristallnacht in 1938.

So you imagine there were in
these limited number of rooms, there were eight people in hiding.

I think Anne’s relationship with these people is
very much influenced by the fact that she was 13, 14 years old.

She was a young teenage girl and
with a very lively character.

really fell trapped.

I was more an outdoor child so I found it very
very difficult to sit still day in day out.

Missed my father and my brother and my friends.

So I think the strife for freedom is
is very much dominant in the diary.

The living conditions in the secret
annex were extremely cramped.

Anne, having been forced to share
a room with Fritz Pfeffer, who in the diary she refers to as Dr.

Dussel, would find solace in her writing.

Her writing was partly an act of catharsis, as with many teenagers, but it was also spurred on by a
radio broadcast that she happened   to hear on the BBC World Service.

There was radio broadcast because you
were not allowed to listen to the BBC, but people did.

Somebody from the interior minister, I believe it was, said everybody who can should write a diary about
what happened to them during this occupation.

It’s very important for the future.

The first entries in the hiding place reflect
a sort of sense of adventure and excitement.

However,
the boredom and tedium soon set in.

followed by the fear as they
heard the bombing raids.

When you read the diary, you read about all these scenes and all her   emotions when it comes to her
relation with the other people.

She loved her father.

She had kind of a difficult
relationship with her mother.

Her relationship with her sister, Margot, was on and off.

During the course of those two years, she also falls in love with Peter, the boy in the secret annex.

However, Towards the end of the diary, she’s outgrown him and she’s concentrating
more on her personal philosophy, how difficult it is to have those ideals
when everything around her is crumbling.

The Germans made house searches in the apartments
because they really wanted to catch every Jew.

So we had a hiding place within the hiding place.

The people from the resistance came and built hiding places where we could go when
they came at night to search for us.

Otto had secured a loyal group of his
workforce to aid the Franks in hiding.

They were Miep Gies, the office administrator, Jo Kleiman, and Victor Kugler, the office managers, and Otto’s secretary, Beb Foskiel.

Well, the four employees of Otto Frank
enabled them to stay here for 25 months.

They provided them with food, with drinks, with books, very important for Anne.

To look after eight people for over two years
was an incredible burden of responsibility.

They made a choice to risk their own
lives in order to save that of others.

Throughout their time in the annex, the eight of them would often tune in to radio
broadcasts to listen to the progress of the war.

They were heartened to learn that on June 6, 1944, the Allied force it had landed in Normandy.

More than 800,000 Allied troops entered
occupied France by the end of June, which along with the Russian forces to the east
would create a two-front war for the Nazis.

This was the beginning of the end of World War II.

The invasion was a great source of
motivation to Anne and all those in hiding.

They could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Otto would listen for news of the advancement   and plot it on a small map of Normandy
hung on the wall of the annex.

Eva, however, would not hear of the Normandy landings and
Allied advancement as she and her mother Elfride, along with her father and her brother Heinz, had.

had been betrayed and captured in May 1944.

After two years, we were betrayed by a Dutch nurse who
pretended she was a member of the resistance, but she was really working with the Nazis.

Unlike Eva Schloss and her family, it would be and continue to be
to this day a complete mystery   as to the identity of the person
who betrayed the Frank family.

There was a telephone call in the morning
of August the 4th 1944 where they said that it was a woman’s voice who who said that
there were Jews hidden in 263 Prinzergracht.

The Franks, the Van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer
were all getting along with their   restricted daily routine when the
Dutch police and a Gestapo officer, Carl Silverbauer, entered the office and asked the staff
at gunpoint to open the bookcase.

They knew from the anonymous tip-off
exactly what was going on in the building.

They went up to the annex and all were arrested, including two of their helpers, Jo Kleiman and Victor Kugler.

Miep Gies had managed to evade arrest.

She knew that the authorities would
soon be coming to clear the annex, so managed to rescue what she could.

It was then she found Anne’s diary.

Knowing that Anne was a budding writer, she placed it safely in her desk drawer.

It was there the diary remained, lying dormant, waiting to be reunited with its owner.

Eva’s capture had happened on May 11th, 1944, her 15th birthday.

They were settling down to breakfast
when there was a knock at the door.

The Gestapo barged in and arrested Eva and her
mother and took them to the Gestapo headquarters.

We were first sent to Westerbork, which was a holding camp.

And we were immediately put on a
list and transported to Auschwitz.

It was in Auschwitz where Eva and her family
would be kept for the duration of the war.

After their capture, the Frank family would follow Eva’s
route to Westerbork work camp in   the Netherlands and then east to Auschwitz.

Anne and Margot were transported to Bergen-Belsen.

There was no food.

It was pretty much abandoned.

It was riddled with disease.

So you imagine the combination of despair, of cold, of starvation and disease.

It was pretty impossible to survive Bergen-Belsen.

Anne and Margot’s health deteriorated
rapidly in Bergen-Belsen.

In March 1945, a typhus epidemic swept through the camp.

And although there are no records, it is this which is believed to have killed
firstly Margot Frank and then two days later.

And Frank, the real tragedy lies in
that just a few weeks later, Bergen-Belsen would be
liberated by British forces.

With five German attempts to cover up, we found these in the open field.

Clear-cut evidence of beatings and
outright murder was on every hand.

Nameless victims were numbered for
records which the Germans destroyed.

This was Bergen-Belsen.

Eva and her mother Elfride, along with Otto Frank, all of whom were still in Auschwitz, would each find themselves seeing
out the final days and felt the relief as the Russian troops liberated the camp.

All three would not foresee at that time how
inexplicably their lives would become linked, not to just each other, but to Anne Frank and the legacy she would leave.

The lives and experience of Anne Frank and Ava   Schloss had mirrored one another throughout
the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Both had been forced to hide
and both had been betrayed, captured and sent to concentration camps.

This is where the similarities end, however, as Anne Frank, along with her sister Margot, tragically perished in Bergen-Belsen
just weeks before the liberation.

Despite the death of her father, Erik, and brother, Heinz, Eva and her mother both managed to survive the
horrors of Auschwitz along with Otto Frank, Anne’s father.

As the Allied troops advanced
from the west and from the east, World War II drew to a close.

We were liberated by the Russians
on the 27th of January 1945.

And Otto Frank was liberated with us in
Auschwitz and he did the same journey as we did.

We saw him several times, but there were several hundred people.

It took him five months to get back to Amsterdam.

and the Germans were fighting very, very hard in Poland.

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