The 10th of May, 1940, World War 2, the
Netherlands.

Nazi Germany invades Holland and the German Air Forces – the Luftwaffe – use
paratroopers in the capture of tactical points and to assist in the advance of ground troops across
the country.

The invasion is accompanied by heavy aerial bombardment of Rotterdam and culminates on
the 14th of May with the destruction of its entire historic center.

Because the Germans threaten
to bomb the city of Utrecht in the same way, the Dutch forces surrender one day later.

Soon
after the Nazis start to occupy the whole country and pass new anti-Jewish laws which are
designed to exclude Jewish people from society and restrict their livelihood.

15,000 Jews who fled from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands between 1933 and
1939 are once again under Nazi domination.

One of them is a Jewish teenager who would become
the world’s most famous diarist Anne Frank.

Annelies Marie Frank was born on the 12th
of June 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany to Otto and Edith Frank.

Anne had also a sister, Margot,
who was three years her senior.

The sisters had a happy childhood playing almost every day in the
garden with the children of their neighborhood The Franks were liberal Jews and
lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various
religions on the outskirts of Frankfurt.

Their life changed dramatically when on the 30th
of January 1933, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, was appointed chancellor of Germany
by the German President Paul von Hindenburg.

The Nazi regime quickly began to restrict the
civil and human rights of the Jewish people and established first the concentration
camps, imprisoning its political opponents, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses,
and others classified as “dangerous”.

Because of business problems
and growing antisemitism, Otto Frank decided to leave Germany
and move to the Netherlands.

In September 1933, he founded a franchise for the
Amsterdam branch of Opekta company that traded in pectin, a gelling agent for making jam.

The rest
of the family moved to Amsterdam soon after.

The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled
from Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939.

After the experiences in the Third Reich,
the family felt soon at home in Amsterdam and the girls enrolled in Dutch schools.

They
made new friends and despite initial problems with the Dutch language, they became
excellent students, especially Margot.

While the girls seemed to be happy about
their new life in their country, for their parents the situation was more challenging.

Otto had to work hard to get his company going and build a new life for his family.

However, the
financial situation of the family improved in 1938 when Otto started a new company called Pectacon,
which was a wholesaler of herbs and spices.

Seeing the development in Nazi Germany and
its aggressive expansion, he even wanted to set up a new business in Great Britain and
move there but this plan did not work out.

The Second World War started on the
1st of September 1939.

Anne Frank was 10 years old when Germany invaded
the Netherlands on the 10th of May 1940.

The life of the Franks, who were once again
under Nazi domination, changed completely.

The criminal Nazi regime from which they ran
away in 1933 finally caught up with them in the country which became their new home and had
made them feel free to live their own life.

The Netherlands became an occupied territory,
and it did not take long for the Nazis to begin introducing new anti-Semitic laws and
regulations restricting the lives of Jews.

Jewish civil servants were fired
and Jewish businesses as well as the Jews themselves had to be registered.

They could no longer visit parks, cinemas, or non-Jewish shops.

Many places thus became
off-limits to Anne who could no longer go to the same school as all Jewish children
had to go to separate Jewish schools.

According to new laws, Jews were no
longer allowed to run their own businesses and the Nazis forced Otto Frank to give up his
companies.

However, Otto had managed to transfer control of his businesses to his employees soon
enough to keep his companies out of Nazi hands.

The situation got worse in 1941 when Jewish men
were arrested during raids and then deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Among them
were friends and acquaintances of the Franks and reports of their deaths would soon to follow.

Otto understood that the situation was
critical and tried to emigrate to the Unites States and Cuba.

However, he never
managed to obtain the necessary documents.

It was in the spring of 1942 when Otto Frank,
anticipating deportation of his own family, decided to set up a hiding place in an empty part
of his business premises at Prinsengracht 263.

Regulations which forced Jews to wear a yellow
badge in the form of a Star of David as a means of identification were announced in the
Netherlands on the 29th of April 1942.

Those caught without the badge after the
5th of May, when they came into effect, was arrested and detained for six-week period.

The systematic deportation of Dutch Jews to the death camps started in the summer of 1942.

Transports regularly left the transit camps of Westerbork and Vught.

Out of 140,000 Jews who
lived in the Netherlands by the beginning of the Second World War, 107,000 including little
children were deported mostly for Auschwitz and Sobibor by September, 1944.

Out of the
107,000, only 5,000 returned after the war.

Before going into hiding, the 12th of June 1942
was probably the last happy moment for the Frank family.

It was the day when Anne celebrated
her 13th birthday and received her diary.

A diary which would one day make her
famous and in which she would write about her feelings and thoughts during
the difficult times that were to come.

Less than one month later, on the 5th
of July 1942, Margot, Anne’s sister, received a call-up to report for a so-called
‘labor camp’ in Nazi Germany.

Knowing the faith of their friends and acquaintances who had been sent
to such camps and never returned, the Franks did not hesitate for a moment.

The next morning, they
went into hiding in order to escape persecution.

In the secret annex the family
would spend long 761 days.

After 7 days, the Franks were joined by the
Van Pels family made up of Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter from whom Anne would
receive her first kiss in the secret annex.

In November, they were joined by Fritz
Pfeffer, a dentist and family friend.

It is Anne’s diary thanks to which we
know how the Frank family and 4 others lived for more than 2 years in a three-story
space entered through a revolving bookcase.

The people in hiding were completely dependent
on six helpers.

They were employees and friends of Anne’s father who provided food, clothing,
and everything necessary to the 8 people in the Secret Annex between 1942 and 1944.

Writing helped Anne pass the time and it is thanks to her diary that we can get a glimpse
into the everyday life of the people in hiding.

It was important to be silent especially
from 8:30 AM when the men in the warehouse, which was located below the secret annex, started
their work day.

Any sound could cause suspicion.

The morning was devoted to reading, studying,
and preparing for their lunch break.

At 12:30 PM, when the warehouse workers went home
for lunch, a few of the helpers came up to the Secret Annex to have lunch with those in hiding.

Miep Gies usually stayed in the office to keep an eye on things.

The people in hiding could
see other faces and listen to the “Radio Oranje” which was a programme broadcasted
by the BBC where Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, who on the 13th of May 1940 had escaped from the
invading German troops and travelled to England, spoke 34 times during the course of the war.

While in the afternoon some people in hiding took a nap , Anne used to write or study.

Then
they had a coffee, prepared dinner and at 5:30 PM, when the warehouse workers went home, the
people in hiding could leave the Secret Annex and spread out through the building.

They would cook dinner and took turns using the bathroom as they did in the morning before
the warehouse workers started their working day.

The situation became more
dangerous after September 1942, when special units were formed, made up of Dutch
collaborators that began hunting for hiding Jews.

An estimated 25,000 Jews went
into hiding in the Netherlands.

Two thirds of them survived and one
third were betrayed and discovered.

The 8 people in the Secret Annex belonged to
the later group.

To this day, we do not know the reason for the police raid, but the hiding period
came to an abrupt end on the 4th of August 1944.

Dutch police officers headed by SS officer Karl
Silberbauer went to investigate a tip-off that Jews were hiding in the upstairs rooms at
Prinsengracht 263.

The hiding place had been discovered and Otto and the others were arrested.

While Silberbauer confiscated their valuables and money, he scattered out the papers and notebooks.

After people from the Secret Annex were then taken to Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam, two
other helpers took the documents before the Secret Annex was emptied by order of the Nazis.

Anne’s diary and her other manuscripts survived.

From a prison in Amsterdam, they were
sent to the Westerbork transit camp.

They ended up in the prison barracks,
and the men and women were separated.

Otto had to work during the day but in the
evening he could be with Edith, Margot, and Anne.

After a few weeks, they were sent to the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

Their train was the last one to leave
Westerbork for this extermination camp located in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The train journey took three horrible days, during
which Anne and over a thousand others were packed closely together in cattle wagons.

There was
little food and water and only a barrel for a toilet.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Nazi doctors
checked to see who would and who would not be able to do heavy forced labor.

Around 350
people from Anne’s transport were immediately taken to the gas chambers and murdered.

While Otto ended up in a camp for men, Anne, Margot and their mother Edith were
sent to the labor camp for women.

After the war, survivors described them as an
inseparable trio.

Otto would never see them again.

When in early November 1944, Anne and Margot were
deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, their parents stayed behind at Auschwitz.

Edith
died of weakness and disease on the 6th of January 1945, three weeks before the
Red Army liberated the camp.

At Bergen-Belsen, Anne reunited with her friend
– Nanette Blitz – who survived the Holocaust and described Anne “ as bald, emaciated, and
shivering”.

She added that Anne did not wish to live any longer as she believed
her parents were both dead.

However, Anne also did tell her that she hoped to one day
write a book based on her diary when the war ends.

Sanitary conditions were terrible
and there was no water for washing and hardly enough for drinking and
cooking.

Between January and March 1945 when the prisoners were sent on death
marches from the other concentration camps, about one-third of the prisoners who arrived
in the transports were already dead, and almost 80 percent of the rest had to be fetched by
truck from the station as they were too week and sick to walk.

On one occasion out of a
transport of 1,900 inmates over 500 arrived dead.

The prisoners got almost no food during these
death marches and there was no food when they arrived at the camp either.

The camp was
so overcrowded that during winter months when it was freezing cold, the prisoners had
to sleep in a sitting position on the floor and somehow try to share only 200 blankets
in a camp of tens of thousands of prisoners.

Due to starvation, thirst and
the outbreak of typhus epidemics, the average daily mortality rate of
prisoners was between 250 and 300.

In these terrible conditions, Anne
and Margot contracted typhus as well.

After the war, Gena Turgel, a survivor of
Bergen Belsen who worked in the camp hospital and knew Anne remembered seeing her and in in
her own words said that Anne was “ delirious, terrible and burning up.

” She also brought Anne
water with which to wash.

But unfortunately, Anne and her sister did not survive
After Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by
the shock, Anne died one day later.

They both died in February 1945
owing to the effects of typhus, Margot first, Anne shortly afterwards.

It was initially believed that the sisters died a
few weeks before the camp’s liberation on the 15th of April 1945.

However, it was later revealed
that they may have died as early as February.

Anne and Margot are among the millions of
victims who were senteced to death by starvation, thirst, illnesses, ill treatment
or extermination with Zyklon B gas.

However, there was one person from the Secret
Annex who survived.

It was Otto, Anne’s father.

He was liberated on the 27th of January
1945 when the Soviets entered Auschwitz.

On the way back to the Netherlands he
found out that his wife Edith had died but he hoped that Anne and Margot had somehow
survived.

He returned to the liberated Netherlands on the 3rd of June 1945 – 9 days before
what would have been Anne’s 16th birthday.

All hope was lost one month later when he
learned about the death of his daughters.

Miep Gies, one of the helpers of the
Secret Annex, passed him Anne’s diary.

After he found enough courage to read
it, he was astonished by her writing.

He also read about Anne’s dreams to become
a writer and journalist and her intention to publish her stories about their life in the
Secret Annex after the war would be over.

In the end, Anne’s dreams would come true.

First 3,000 copies of her book – “Secret Annex” – were published in 1947.

Since then, the
book has been translated into over 70 languages.

People all over the world were introduced to
Anne’s story and in 1960, the hiding place which for 2 years became the home to 8 people
who tried to survive the atrocities of the criminal Nazi regime, became a museum: the
Anne Frank House.

Today, you can even visit her room that has walls brightened with picture
postcards and movie stars which Anne collected and see her original diary and other
manuscripts which she wrote until her arrest.

Anne Frank, a teenage girl who perished
in the death camp and whose only “sin” was that she was a Jew, has become a symbol
which will live forever and will always remind us of the dangers of discrimination
and racism, and hatred towards each other.

thanks for watching the world history channel and
don’t miss our next videos click the subscribe button now for more interesting clips give us
a like and see you in the following episode