DAC CUSTOMER SERVICES / SPECIAL PROJECTS

Spending our New Year celebration in Amsterdam, Maxine and I decided to visit the Anne Frank Museum. It was such a moving experience, I thought it might be interesting to write about the visit in this issue.
   Although millions of people lost their lives in WW2 through persecution or on the battlefront and many performed meritorious deeds, no other story has captured imagination and been a source of so much inspiration to people all over the world as that of Anne Frank.
   The story of the Frank family began in Germany in the 1920's when Otto and Edith Frank led a happy life, highlighted by the births of their daughters Margot and Anne. Anne and Margot frequently spent their summer in Aachen, Germany, with their grandmother. In 1933, in response to Hitler's anti-Jewish decrees, Otto Frank opened a branch of his company, Opteka, in Amsterdam and began planning to take his family there. They moved into a house on Medwedplein in southern Amsterdam in 1933 and Anne attended the nearby Montessori school, where she excelled. She made many friends and was an exceptional student.
   But the family's feelings of security collapsed when in 1940, Adolph Hitler and his troops conquered Holland and the freedom of the Jews began to be severely restricted. Dictates on where Jews could shop, go to school, or even swim became a
part of everyday life. Aware of where those restrictions might ultimately lead, Otto Frank spent the year preparing and stocking an annex behind his business office to turn it into a hiding place.
   On her 13th birthday in 1942,

Anne received as a gift, a diary from her parents. She took to writing her intimate thoughts and musings. A few weeks later, Margot received a notice from the Nazi SS to report for work detail at a labour camp. On July 5th, 1942, Anne and the Frank family moved to their secret annex.  Anne’s diary went with her. She called it Kitty and for the two years she spent in hiding, the diary was her solace, her confidant and her friend. What she recorded there were the ordinary thoughts and feelings of a teenage girl, but one living under extraordinary circumstances and in ominous times.
   Eight people eventually came to live in the secret annex. There were the four members of the Frank family, three from the Van Pels family - Herman and Auguste and their son Peter – together with an elderly dentist named Pfeffer.
Anne's famous diary captured two years of hiding in the attic above the store, but ended on August 4, 1944, when their hiding place was betrayed by a Dutch cleaning woman - Lena Hartog-van Bladeren. All those who lived there were arrested by the Nazis and deported to concentration camps.
   As the Gestapo searched the annex for valuables, the briefcase in which Anne kept her writings was opened and the papers scattered on the floor. Little did these men realise the eventual value of these materials. However, two women who had known of Anne's intense feelings about these papers, saw them later and gathered them up for safekeeping.
   A few weeks later, as the Allies began retaking Holland, the inhabitants of the camp were

Mike Son
DaC Customer Services / Special Projects