The Annex hid Anne and her family and the other family's living in the Annex such as the Van Danns. She has lived in hiding for two years before she has gotten taken by the SS soldiers on 4 August 1944. They live over a work place for Germans and they tell them information on what is going on the outside world. Anne's Annex was found during the holocaust when her fathers workers have said that the Jews were in hiding.As well as the Frank family there are four other Jews in the Annex: Hermann and Auguste van Pels with their son Peter, and Fritz Pfeffer. Four of Otto’s employees help them. Everyone lives in constant fear of discovery. And it’s certainly not easy for eight people to live in such close quarters.Anne, like the others, finds it difficult hiding in the Secret Annex. They can never go outside, and always have to be careful. It's very tense. Anne uses her diary to get her frustrations off her chest.Anne is arrested along with all the others. In the Auschwitz concentration camp, Anne ends up in the same barracks as her mother and sister. Later, Anne and Margot are taken to Bergen-Belsen. Anne dies there in March 1945, at the age of 15. Her secret Annex is located at Prinsengracht 263-267, 1016 GV Amsterdam, Netherlands. During hiding Anne and her family had to keep the quiet or they would have been arrested for what they have done. According to estimates, approximately 300,000 people of which probably 28,000 Jews, hid in the Netherlands, either for a short or long time period. Before they wen into hiding they would ask themselves to hide or just not to hide. If they didn't want end up in prison, they had to go into hiding. Sometimes only those in hiding were arrested and their helpers left alone, but other times the helpers were arrested too because of helping the Jews in hiding. In theory, there were heavy penalties for being caught helping a Jew for there safety.Of the 25,000 Jews who went into hiding, 8,000 were discovered and sent to the death camps, mostly Auschwitz. Even then, there was a chance to survive; a very low chance however. In many cases the prisoners would be sent to labor camps which as the name states gave them duties to accomplish. In July 1942, the people in hiding are unaware that they will spend more than two years in the Secret Annex with Anne Frank and her Family. All that time, they will not be able to go outside and they will have to share the darkness and dampness of the hiding place, continually fearful of being discovered and one day they were just because of a helper telling the SS about them. This would get the families put into different camps and of them all, Otto Frank was the only survivor. In honor of his daughter, he published his daughter's diary which was an account of some of the hardships they faced during hiding. |
This is a picture of one of the living spaces where Anne Frank lives during hiding, The secret Annex was a very small space there was barely any room for them to live in, but somehow they managed to do so.
Here is the only living film of Anne frank before she went into hiding.
Anne Frank’s diary, saved by one of the family’s members Otto Frank, her father, was first published as a book in 1947. Today, her diary has been translated into 70 languages and is one of the most widely read books in the world.
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