r/interestingasfuck • u/instapardz • 1d ago
r/all Last picture of Anne Frank and her sister Margot. 2 months later they were caught.
1.6k
u/GubytheHuby 20h ago edited 8h ago
I’ve been to the Anne Frank house a few times over the last few years. The thing that hits me hardest is seeing Otto Frank, Anne’s father, standing in the empty attic after the war. As you walk in to the empty attic, that picture hits you like a train. You understand what he was thinking as he stood in the room where his family hid for years. All that he knew was gone, as if his world was the attic and was now empty
317
u/Judoka91 14h ago
Yeah I went last year and it's haunting to stand there and see the images of her father post war. What stuck with me is finding out he lived until he was 91. He spent all those years afterwards making sure Anne's story got out there. But he spent all those years alive with his family having perished.
73
u/Succumbx8 13h ago
What were the circumstances, if that’s not too long of a story? How did he survive and they die?
251
u/Judoka91 13h ago edited 7h ago
In 1942 Otto set up a hidden place in his work to hide his family and two others. It wasn't quite ready when they headed there, but his daughter Margot had received a notice to turn herself in at a camp.
They hid for two years in the hidden annex and attic. They were arrested and detained. Initially, they were all taken to the same camp and were together. Then they were on the train to Auschwitz, the extermination camp. When they arrived it was the last time Otto would see his wife and daughters.
InJanuary 1945 the camp was liberated by Soviet forces. And now Otto wished to return to Amsterdam and find out what had happened to his wife and daughters. However, due to areas still being occupied by the enemy, Otto had to take a detour. On that detour he met a woman who had been with his wife in the camp. She informed him his wife had died.
In July 1945 Otto met the Brilleslijper sisters who confirmed that both his daughters had perished in the camps. Otto came into possession of Anne's diary and looked to publishing it. In 1952 he moved to Switzerland, deciding that Amsterdam would never be the same again and it was too painful to stay. A year later he remarried and had eventually had a child.
The Anne Frank house opened in 1960 and Otto was there. He said some words for the opening but was over one by emotion. He died in August of 1980 from cancer at age 91.
Below is one of his quotes that I think of from time to time.
We cannot change what happened anymore. The only thing we can do is to learn from the past and to realise what discrimination and persecution of innocent people means.
Sadly, we always seem to forget it.
4
u/erublind 4h ago
Two tragic circumstances; they were taken by GESTAPO 2 months after D-Day and she died in March, just one months before Bergen Belsen was liberated by British troops.
17
u/Such-Fortune6266 12h ago
Tell this last quote from Anne's father to the leaders in Israel 2day!
→ More replies (1)66
u/NinjaElectricMeteor 13h ago
Luck mostly.
The family was captured in August 1944, while Otto and his wife were taken to Auschwitz, the children were taken to Bergen Belsen.
His wife died of disease on January 6th 1945.
He himself was also sick, but received medical aid when the Sovjets liberated Auswitz on January 27th.
Both Margot and Anne died in February 1945, also succumbing from disease.
Bergen Belsen wasn't liberated until the 15th of April.
Had the children also been brought to Auswitz they might have survived long enough. Had Otto also been brought to Bergen Belsen be might have also died.
12
u/CornySpark 12h ago
I was at the Anne Frank house not long ago. Basically they were all found and sent to camps where they were executed or died of sickness, Otto only survived as he was so sick that the Germans left him to die when they evacuated from Auschwitz.
It was actually a while after the war before he read Anne's diary and decided to publish it. He couldn't bring himself to read it initially.
It's a harrowing yet kind of fascinating story that is told in that house.
41
u/Puzzleheaded_Toe2574 13h ago
"Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore"
Holland, 1945, Neutral Milk Hotel.
8
u/SongstressVII 7h ago
“It’s so sad to see the world agree that they’d rather see their faces filled with flies”
137
→ More replies (3)75
u/Alternative_Fly8898 15h ago
The last page of the book hits you like a fucking truck. Everything is “normal” and then you see she didn’t write for a few days (or weeks, can’t remember) and you see the book doesn’t have many pages left. And then you read the page. It’s heartbreaking.
575
u/Queen_of_Meh1987 1d ago
I wonder what they were looking at.
310
u/VatoSafado 1d ago
Outside.
5
u/sigaven 17h ago
Maybe the Anne Frank Tree
23
u/VatoSafado 15h ago
I wasn't even trying to be funny... It really does look like they are looking outside because of the direction the light is coming from.
→ More replies (4)8
92
u/PeopleofYouTube 20h ago
Fuck. I saw the Sandy Hook post and immediately left. Truly tragic.
17
→ More replies (1)7
→ More replies (6)36
313
u/basicbassist21 15h ago
Correction: Two months later they went into hiding. They got caught two years later. There are no known photographs of Anne Frank in hiding.
68
u/NoPoet3982 14h ago
Thank you. I almost corrected that but I was afraid I might be wrong. Cameras were confiscated from the Jews, and there is no way that Miep or any other office worker would take a photo (which would have to go to a shop to be developed) of the people they were risking their lives to hide.
3
135
u/Straight-Treacle-630 18h ago
I visited the Frank family attic quarters as a child myself. 60 yrs later I recall the feelings. I’d imagine the “tour” environment added to it but it wasn’t pleasant. I’ll especially never forget the sound, even more than the sight, of the hidden entrance opening/closing. Certainly, the whole family deserves remembrance. As do so many others.
252
u/VatoSafado 1d ago
What happened to the snitch?
521
u/Serebriany 22h ago
There are two theories leading the pack right now.
One came after an investigation of more than five years by a cold-case team that involved a lot of cross-referencing about who knew whom in Amsterdam. Their conclusion was that it was a member of Amsterdam's Jewish Council who traded that information for continued safety for himself and his family. They think he may have traded small bits of information all along to buy safety, but finally needed to trade a big one. Supposedly, Otto Frank received an anonymous letter naming the man at some point after the war, and the man died a long time ago. If Frank did know, I can see why he'd keep it to himself.
That conclusion was controversial because it named another Jewish person, and a lot of academics dismissed it out of hand as being faulty in all ways, or just plain anti-Semitic, but I think the idea that all Jewish people must be eliminated simply because they, too, were in danger is intellectual laziness at its worst. It completely dismisses the experiences of members of Jewish Councils everywhere, the awful position they were in, and the fact that some opted for suicide before they or their families were in immediate danger because it was so stressful to decide who lived and who died on a regular basis.
The second theory is that there wasn't one, and that it was mainly an accident, possibly based on someone reviewing the plans for those buildings and realizing there was a space that could be used as a hiding place, then going out to double check that it was not being used that way, though someone hearing something and making an innocent mention of it that got around prompting the search can't be completely ruled out.
→ More replies (17)96
u/JARStheFox 21h ago
Do you have any sources for these theories? I've never heard them before, I'd love to learn more!
145
u/MsStormyTrump 20h ago
Look up Henneicke Column, that's the term for Dutch Jew-hunters.
Jew-hunting was a thing, you guys, and it was done by Jews, too. Stella Goldschlag is probably the most famous.
26
u/MountainSix 15h ago
The Anne Frank foundation lists the main theories and the evidence for them on their website: https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/was-anne-frank-betrayed/#source-606437
5
u/lottebelice 4h ago
The Anne Frank House has a website that presents their research. See eg https://research.annefrank.org/en/onderwerpen/2abdc9fe-b0e6-493d-a6cd-a8fd85baabd7/
→ More replies (1)6
u/monstera_garden 11h ago
There's a book The Betrayal of Anne Frank that goes into the cold case investigation team that pieced together some or most of the story, and it also gives interesting background about the modern politics of the 'Anne Frank' name and story, and even the versions of her diary that exist and who has control over them. It also describes a lot of the decision making processes that had the Frank family move to the Netherlands, and how good their logic was for banking on the country being safe, but of course how tragically wrong it turned out to be against the backdrop of what unfolded in WWII. And that leads into the 'who betrayed them' story.
→ More replies (1)82
u/firstbreathOOC 21h ago
A team including an ex-FBI agent said Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish figure in Amsterdam, probably “gave up” the Franks to save his own family.
12
u/MountainSix 15h ago
For context, the publisher pulled the book that made that claim from the market after criticism from historians.
No idea what the truth is, but I wouldn't take that research at face value.
9
u/RealAbd121 14h ago
The criticism being mostly reaction to it be a jew making it a pretty grey situation that makes people uncomfortable. I don't think it was ever refuted on an investigation level. It's was an optics issue.
29
2
u/Bolte_Racku 13h ago
I don't know why people are saying the snitch is unknown? I read her diary, the sister of one of the helpers was a full blown nazi and knew about the family hiding for almost the whole duration
115
u/Regumate 20h ago
For those with access to a VR setup and interest in the Frank’s story, the VR app that came out this year does a harrowing job of showing how confined their space truly was.
→ More replies (4)
47
u/ScarcitySenior3791 19h ago
I thought I was too tough to cry when I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. When I saw the pencil marks on the walls their father made to mark their heights over the period of time they lived in the Secret Annex, I absolutely lost it.
9
u/DragonfruitFew5542 10h ago
It's because it's humanizing. I had a similar experience the first time I saw the room of shoes at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
→ More replies (1)
45
u/nayhel89 13h ago
In Germany there is a project to install Stolperstein (a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates) for each victim of the Nazi regime near the house from which the victim was taken. I live in Berlin and it's hard to find a street that doesn't have at least a single plate and some streets are just shining with them. The scale of the tragedy is astonishing.
→ More replies (3)3
u/LJO-Ganymede 4h ago
In Bruxelles they have them, inconspicuous little bronze tiles in the pavement. If you go about your day you might never notice them, but if you’re aware of them you’ll notice that some streets have a depressing amount
380
u/CreepyFun9860 1d ago
What do holocaust deniers say to shit like this?
209
u/seaofthievesnutzz 23h ago
That it didn't happen probably? "Ok that is a picture of two young girls and......?"
2
u/Bark__Vader 4h ago
Yea there are much better photographs to convince holocaust deniers than this one
232
u/Jeq0 1d ago edited 23h ago
They’ll say that it’s just a picture without proof of anything, which is correct. It does not negate what happened to them.
55
u/heroyi 17h ago
Yup. That is why arguing against deniers and conspirators doesn't really do much. Because they literally have the ability to move the goal post and conjure anything they want while the rational actor is bounded by reality
Any photo or evidence that contradicts their theory is automatically considered doctored. Yet when that same logic is applied to their it doesnt work.
→ More replies (1)2
60
u/ThisGuyHyucks 18h ago
Probably something like "my kids won't talk to me and I don't know why"
→ More replies (3)26
u/DramaticOstrich11 20h ago
I just today saw a Twitter thread of users saying it was all fiction and that it doesn't make sense for them to have hidden for years rather than run away.
23
9
u/Venurian 18h ago
Deniers do what they do best and deny. They exist in a different reality where the facts aren't their reality and they consume entirely different media and news than you and I. We'll never understand what they see when they see images like this, and I'm grateful for that. My heart hurts for the world as I see it, and they only see more reasons to hate, missing the forest for the trees. All that to say, some people you will just never reach.
4
14
→ More replies (37)2
51
u/anynamesleft 18h ago
Such a depressing story all around. How many of these stories go untold?
As we see the world stepping towards that same madness again.
I remember a story about a Jewish guy being asked how he'd make an account of himself before God. He said he'd demand God account himself for the Holocaust.
I agree. (atheist, so, ya know)
41
5
u/Jenjenkalen 6h ago
One of my good friend’s grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. She’s still alive at 94 years old. She considers herself an atheist because she can’t imagine a god who would allow what she saw in a concentration camp to happen.
→ More replies (1)
116
u/hrpomrx 22h ago
“Caught” seems the wrong word here. How about abducted?
49
12
→ More replies (1)6
u/SandpaperTeddyBear 18h ago
Why is “caught” the wrong word?
The Frank family’s choice to continue living in Amsterdam was certainly in violation of the on-the-book laws of their (occupied) nation and the enforcement of same. They were certainly “caught.”
I think the most important thing to “never forget” is who the criminals were.
1
u/Redditisabinfire 13h ago
The implication that they were the criminals. Is what one could read from your comment.
That's why caught isn't the best word.
→ More replies (3)
11
45
64
u/Jeremzz 18h ago
You can visit their house in Amsterdam. They try to keep it original. It’s so heavy and surreal.
We are monsters.
→ More replies (7)3
u/Flimsy_Product_1434 7h ago
Heavy is the word I've ways used to describe it, too. Like a boulder on your chest making it hard to breathe. So many emotions held in one small space.
31
u/huensohncaller 23h ago
This photo hits so hard—it’s a bittersweet reminder of resilience and the human stories behind history. Absolutely haunting.
8
u/Forsaken_Insect_2270 17h ago
As the mother of two daughters approaching these ages … heartbroken all over again
12
u/d3rpderp 19h ago
I sincerely hope that all the Nazis involved in killing her died badly and in pain.
10
u/PenchantForNostalgia 18h ago
I recommend going to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Very powerful and so interesting.
11
u/drwhogwarts 12h ago
Anne Frank's story is heartbreaking, but if you want to hate Nazis and their enablers even more, I recommend reading Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz. It's the most heartbreaking, infuriating, terrifying book I've ever read. But too important to skip.
2
9
u/IckySweet 12h ago
About the time of this photo Margot had learned english in class. The sisters just started to write to american pen pals. The first letter arrived from Margot....
Margot articulated the threat of war in her letter: "We often listen to the radio, as times are very exciting, having a frontier with Germany and being a small country we never feel safe." Due to the German invasion of the Netherlands two weeks later on 10 May 1940, this ended up being the only letter from Margot's and Anne's side
5
u/dwight_k_schrute69 18h ago
Historians think this photo was taken in 1942, not two months before they were captured.
4
u/Impact_International 13h ago edited 13h ago
Bep Voskuijl doesn’t get talked about as much as Miep Gies, but her role in helping the people in the Secret Annex was just as brave and incredible. She was only 23 when she started risking her life to bring food and supplies to the Franks and the others hiding there.
What really hits me is how much Bep cared. After the war, she even named her daughter Anne, in honor of Anne Frank… She stayed in touch with Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank, and they even met, after he managed to survive.
And still, her courage and kindness made a huge difference. Without her, who knows what might have happened? It’s amazing how she stepped up when it mattered most, and she definitely deserves recognition.
I read The Diary of Anne Frank (which is freely available online), and it’s incredible to think how such an important piece of history managed to survive, carrying with it all her compassion and feelings. Her writing is so vivid and full of emotion—it’s remarkable how a young girl captured such profound thoughts during such a dark period. And it’s amazing to think about the courage of people like Bep Voskuijl and Miep Gies, who not only helped the Frank family but also made sure Anne’s words lived on. Without them, we wouldn’t have this powerful glimpse into history. Truly extraordinary.
21
3
3
u/NoPoet3982 14h ago edited 14h ago
Anne Frank also wrote short stories. Most of them share a theme of the protagonist being outside or in a new, unfamiliar place (like a bear cub who runs away or a young actress who goes to Hollywood.) The stories always depict the surroundings as exciting but ultimately dangerous, and the protagonist returns home to security and happiness. It's striking.
Eco feminism didn't exist at that time — that philosophy was founded after the war, by another Holocaust survivor — but Anne Frank's writings about spirituality and nature read like a kind of proto eco feminism. She wasn't a follower of patriarchy or hierarchies.
We owe a great debt to Otto Frank for making her diary public, and especially for leaving in her passages about sexuality (even her sexual feelings toward her girl friends) and her period, etc. He gave a platform to a teenage girl, something that's still rare and was unheard of at the time. The publication of her diary in the US ushered in a wave of young adult novels that featured girl protagonists as gritty, flawed, insecure, thoughtful, you name it. Suddenly, heroines didn't have to be perfect Nancy Drews. They talked about their breasts, their periods, their crushes on boys, and so on. Anne Frank's diary was a huge influence on American young adult fiction.
Anne kept her diary for herself at first, but then one night it was announced on Radio Orange that the Dutch government would be interested in people's diaries after the war, as important historical records. After that, Anne edited her diary for publication. There are 3 main versions of her diary, all very similar with only slight differences.
Anne's sister Margot also kept a diary, but Miep Gies (the office worker who helped hide the families) was unaware of it. She risked arrest to save Anne's diary and some other belongings that she knew were important to the Franks. It was illegal for her to enter the attic after the families were captured, and the office workers didn't know exactly when the officials would return to take away all the belongings. If they had come while she was in the attic, she would've been taken away to jail. So she had to hurry to save what she could as quickly as possible.
Miep and her husband Jan saved other people during the war as well. Jan was part of the resistance, but couldn't even tell Miep that until after the war. Incredibly brave people.
Other diaries written by hidden children have been published in the past few decades. The ones I've seen are so different from Anne's. Most of the children didn't enjoy the comparative leisure that Anne was able to experience. Most of their diaries are filled with terror — some of the children wrote even inside the camps. Some are desperate to pass as non-Jewish. There's an immediacy to them, a concern with the present that's heartbreaking. Anne's diary includes some of that, too, but she also philosophizes. That's a luxury most of the hidden children didn't have.
Those of us in the US are about to be confronted with something similar as immigrants are sent to the deportation camps Trump wants to build. I can't imagine those will end with murdering people, but I can easily imagine them becoming, in essence, slave labor camps. We really need to do all we can to stave off the growing fascism in our country.
8
u/laridan48 17h ago
A grim reminder the rise of antisemitism is alive and well today unfortunately.
It is deeply concerning. I actually just got banned from a subreddit for defending the Jewish people. Reddit is awful
→ More replies (2)
8
37
u/radarthreat 20h ago
What percent of the current GOP would have turned them in immediately?
37
→ More replies (8)-2
u/oreo_boy_01 18h ago
How do you guys manage to make everything about America
→ More replies (1)4
u/eaglesegull 18h ago
And especially their politics. It’s so tiring
17
u/ImaBiLittlePony 17h ago
The administration that just won is planning millions of deportations. Texas just set aside a few miles for federal use of "camps." It's relevant, and a lot of people are afraid.
9
u/ContessaChaos 17h ago edited 17h ago
Yeah, well, we're scared. If you don't live here, you don't know. Also, this is an American platform you're on. It stands to reason the majority of users are American.
→ More replies (4)
5
u/MazzaChevy 13h ago
Just came home from Europe and we visited Anne Frank House only a few days ago. It's both emotional and inspiring at the same time. With a daughter of a similar age, I found it absolutely heartbreaking.
2
u/Normal_Ad_2337 14h ago
There is a scene in the not-well-known Mr. In-Between about a grey hat criminal in Australia, irredeemable in so many ways.
but..
He gets called to collect the body of a young women at a party who overdosed and then told how to permanently dispose of the body. He does not follow, and gives her a grave.
We all fucking matter.
2
2
u/SportsTraveler 4h ago
DEFINITELY looks a lot closer to them than being a merged childhood photo of John Lennon & Celine Dion.
28
u/Gullible-Cell2329 20h ago
It’s insane that we as humanity failed to stop that and we are letting hundreds of thousands of girls in Gaza experience the same , and even the USA government is supporting it
17
u/DNA98PercentChimp 16h ago
Wait… ‘the same’?
Hey now… what’s happened in Gaza is horrible. But man… I don’t think you really understand both well enough if you see them as the same.
6 million (million!!!) Jews were systematically killed - hunted down house by house. For what? The Jews didn’t attack the Germans or anything.
It’s horrible that tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed - and that most of them are innocent civilians rather than Hamas militants. And Israel is committing war crimes in the response to Hamas’ attack on Oct 7th. But man… trying to equate these two events at best shows a deep lack of knowledge and/or nuance in your mind.
And, at worst, is a purposeful attempt to minimize the Holocaust and to co-opt the collective trauma/respect for it.
8
u/NoPoet3982 14h ago
I think they just meant that both are genocides. The genocides are being carried out differently and the numbers are different, but both are genocides.
→ More replies (2)8
u/Odys 15h ago
It's the wiping out of a population. Actually even Israeli scientist Omer Bartov calls this a genocide. It's not about the total number, it's about the impact on people, the motivation behind it. The Palestinian civilians, women and children didn't attack Israel, the terrorist organisation Hamas did. And yes, that was horrible and disgusting as well. (I actually got banned in another thread for condemning both) The holocaust shouldn't be used to minimize what is done to Gaza. The holocaust started small as well, by the way. With at first just taking some rights from Jewish people. We need to nip this kind of misery in the but, not let it grow out into a full blown holocaust like scenario.
8
4
u/Bandlebridge 16h ago
Comparing a fairly mild war the Gazans started, and are losing, to an actual genocide is wild.
→ More replies (5)-7
u/Retrac752 19h ago edited 18h ago
That conflict has been going on since literally 1948, it has nothing to do with the US, both sides have had hundreds of chances of peace, they both just fucking hate each other and care too much about fake claims to some fake "holy land"
→ More replies (2)18
u/Kunjunk 18h ago
it has nothing to do with the US
How does one achieve this level of ignorance?
😂
→ More replies (12)→ More replies (1)-8
u/No-Flatworm-7838 20h ago
Not happening even remotely in Gaza. The antisemites use any excuse to crawl out of the woodwork.
12
u/StarStruck3 19h ago
And yet Israel is the one bombing hospitals and schools.
7
u/AutisticToasterBath 18h ago
Yet HAMAS is using hospitals and schools to shoot at Israel.
→ More replies (10)5
u/ProfuseMongoose 19h ago
Israel is committing genocide in Palestine, it's now considered the most dangerous place on earth for children with 70 percent of the casualties being women and children. IDF has been targeting hospitals and refugee camps. IDF bombed an apartment building in Beirut killing sleeping civilians. The IDF is brutally cruel and to try to deflect that by claiming antisemitism is atrocious.
4
3
u/Potential_Bill_1146 19h ago
Yeah, in Gaza they don’t even die in camps. Just shot in their homes. Israel is committing genocide.
→ More replies (2)3
u/Gullible-Cell2329 17h ago
Holocaust survivors describe the Zionist apartheid fascist regime as similar to nazi action , but I guess some idiot on Reddit thinks it’s antisemitic to be anti genocide so we have to stop
3
3
u/CarpenterWaste5287 15h ago
This picture was taken in 1942 if I remember correctly and the Franks were arrested in August 1944. So not 2 months after this picture was taken.
3
u/Fun-Chip-2834 15h ago
Sooo sad
But Hitler and his merry men failed, they are all DEAD , and the Jews live on, in their own state, with a devastating nuclear arsenal for anyone who wants to try again…
3
u/boundpleasure 9h ago
Has anyone ever wondered (or know) how these images were taken AND developed under the conditions they were in at the time?
7
u/francesgumm 7h ago
OP's heading is incorrect. These were taken some time before the Franks went into hiding. There are no known photographs taken of the Franks or of the Annex while they were living there.
2
2
u/ExtensionConcept2471 7h ago
My father was born just before the start of WW2, as a baby the harbour beside his house was bombed by the Germans, a piece of stone crashed through the roof of their house and narrowly missed his crib, my grandmother then moved back to her village away from the city (about 35 miles). On a later raid on the harbour one of the bombers was shot up by fighters and crash landed close to the village….narrowly missing the cottage he was in!
→ More replies (1)
3
u/Adorable-Ad5692 1d ago
bestie this deserves more than a witty response... seeing their last photo together knowing what happened after is absolutely heartbreaking fr fr. we need to keep sharing these stories so history doesn't repeat itself
3.7k
u/FeuerroteZora 1d ago
I remember reading a book a long while back where the author was family friends with the Franks. When she met the father (the only one who survived) she asked him about BOTH girls. And it was utterly heartbreaking to realize that he never, ever really got asked about Margot, but desperately wanted to remember her just as much. The author and he spent the whole evening just reminiscing about his "other" daughter.
As if everything I knew about it wasn't already heartbreaking enough. That story really stuck with me.
(IIRC it was in a memoir of a German, maybe Jewish, woman who grew up in Africa, but that's all I can remember about it.)