The life of Anne Frank is a tale of tragedy, love, and unimaginable evil — and some of it remains a mystery even today. So, what do we know about the young author's final months?
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00:00The life of Anne Frank is a tale of tragedy, love, and unimaginable evil, and some of it
00:06remains a mystery even today. So what do we know about the young author's final months?
00:11The entire Frank family was forced into hiding when Anne was just 13 years old. That was
00:15in July 1942. About a month earlier, her father had given her a diary for her birthday. Anne
00:20began using it immediately, and not even the Nazis could stop her.
00:25She asked me several times, father, she said nobody's disturbing me, I want to write in
00:31my diary.
00:32Anne didn't record an entry every single day, but she did write with surprising frequency
00:36all things considered. In fact, there's an interesting twist to her diary entries. We'll
00:41get to that later in the video.
00:43Her diary is truly remarkable reading. In her writing, Anne displays not only vulnerability
00:47and understanding of the horror she was facing, but also a great deal of tenacity and resourcefulness.
00:53Anne's family had access to a radio in the attic in which they hid, and they'd often
00:57tune in to the BBC so they could keep up to date with the events of the war. In one of
01:01her more poignant entries, from June 6, 1944, Anne wrote about the D-Day offensive and expressed
01:06her hopes that she might be able to soon leave her hiding place.
01:10In her penultimate entry, on July 21, 1944, Anne wrote about the July 20 plot on Adolf
01:16Hitler's life, which gave her even more hope that the end of the war was nigh. Her final
01:21journal entry was on August 1, 1944. On August 4, she and her family were discovered and
01:26arrested by the Nazis.
01:29After their arrest, the Frank family was first sent to a prison camp and then a detention
01:33center. On September 3, 1944, they were sent to Auschwitz. There, Anne lived under constant
01:39threat of being sent to the gas chambers. Living conditions were appalling, too. The
01:43Nazis provided prisoners with little food and water, barely enough to survive on. Anne
01:47quickly contracted scabies due to the camp's filthy conditions, and it fell to her sister
01:51Margot to take care of her. The two girls were also with their mother, Edith. They had
01:56been separated from their father, Otto.
01:58While Anne was still sick, the Nazis took both her and Margot from Auschwitz and sent
02:02them to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Although Bergen-Belsen wasn't an extermination
02:07camp like Auschwitz, conditions were so poor that countless prisoners died of sickness
02:11and disease.
02:13We were numbed into non-existent being non-existent.
02:20Sadly, by the time the Allies finally liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, both Margot and
02:26Anne were dead.
02:28When Anne Frank arrived at Bergen-Belsen, she was reunited with many of her old friends
02:32from before her time in hiding. One of them was Hannah Pick-Gosler, a former neighbor
02:36of Anne's. Hannah tracked down Anne and the camp in February 1944, and the two girls were
02:41able to talk to each other through a barbed-wire fence.
02:44Somebody told me, your friend Anne Frank is here at the other side of the fence.
02:51Anne was apparently distraught at her family's situation. Hannah later gave her a small care
02:55package that she had received from the Red Cross, but she never saw Anne again after
02:59that.
03:00Another friend Anne saw in the camp was Nanette Blitz-Koenig, a former classmate. Nanette
03:05had spotted Anne through one of the camp's fences and managed to track her down. Their
03:09reunion was bittersweet, however, as they both reflected on the losses they had suffered
03:13over the previous few years. Anne told Nanette about her time at Auschwitz, and the two dreamed
03:17about life after the war's end.
03:20Nanette and Hannah also knew each other, both survived the Holocaust, and both would later
03:24write about their experiences with Anne.
03:26One of the great horrors suffered by Jewish children in the Holocaust was the fact that
03:30most had no idea what became of their family and friends. In September 1944, the Nazis
03:35sent the entire Frank family to Auschwitz, but only Anne and Margot were taken on to
03:40Bergen-Belsen a month later. According to Hannah Pick-Gosler, Anne was absolutely certain
03:44that both of her parents had died at Auschwitz, and she was, obviously, devastated about having
03:49lost them. However, in her own account, Nanette Blitz-Koenig says that Anne was concerned
03:53about both of her parents' fates, and that she hadn't known what had befallen them.
03:57Anne thought, she's the last one of the family, and then you are not making such an effort
04:03anymore.
04:04As it would later turn out, Edith passed away at Auschwitz in January 1945, while Otto survived
04:10due to the camp's liberation. After the war, Otto established a number of charities in
04:14his daughter's name, and was instrumental in getting her diaries published.
04:18In a certain way, through her diary, she is living on in many hearts.
04:23He died in 1980, at the age of 91.
04:27Anne Frank had actually wanted her diary to be published, even as she was writing it.
04:31The twist to her diary is that there are actually two versions. Well, kind of. You see, around
04:37May 1944, Anne began rewriting her diary. For one thing, she was a bit older now, and
04:41she wanted to remove part of the childlike entries. And, in a sense, she was editing
04:45her work for future publication.
04:47Towards the end of her time in the Annex, she heard a BBC broadcast that contained a
04:51speech from the Dutch cabinet minister, Gerrit Volkstein. Volkstein implored those who were
04:55suffering through Nazi occupation to keep their memoirs and other written pieces that
04:59represented their struggles, in the hopes that they would one day be able to publish
05:02them as living testaments to the Holocaust and war.
05:06Anne was moved by Volkstein's words, and she made plans to publish her diary as a book
05:10under the title The Secret Annex. Anne even had aspirations of becoming a writer after
05:14the war, and she was excited about the possibility of the diary being published, even during
05:18her darkest days of her imprisonment. Sadly, she died before getting the chance to live
05:23out her dreams, but her diary has since become one of the most important works on the Holocaust.
05:28Less than a month after Anne and her sister Margot were taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration
05:32camp, an incident occurred that was shocking even by the camp's grim standards. That December,
05:37one of the imprisoned dentists at the camp, Dr. Hadassah Rosensoff, was forced to create
05:42a makeshift home for nearly 50 young orphaned Jewish children who had been abandoned there
05:46by the Nazis. The children's parents had been sent to a different concentration camp, and
05:50the children themselves were left outside in the bitter cold of the northern European
05:54winter.
05:55You could be speaking to someone, and they just die in front of you.
06:00Had Dr. Rosensoff and the other women at Bergen-Belsen not taken care of the children, they would
06:05have almost certainly perished in the harsh conditions, and the Nazis soon left even more
06:09in their care. In all, 150 children were looked after in the home, and the caretakers there
06:14included the Frank sisters. A friend of Anne and Margot says that both sisters helped care
06:19for the children under Dr. Rosensoff's protection, even though they were both only teenagers
06:23at the time.
06:25Amazingly, only one of the 150 children taken in died at Bergen-Belsen, and both Anne and
06:30Margot played a part in their survival.
06:32Though Anne and Margot Frank's imprisonment at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was no
06:36doubt horrific, they were at least able to endure it together. Tragically, though, both
06:40of them ended up contracting typhus during their time at the camp. According to firsthand
06:44accounts, Margot was the sicker of the two. She was particularly susceptible to cold,
06:49and so she suffered greatly in the winter conditions. On top of that, both her and Anne's
06:53bunk was near the ground and close to the door of their barracks, meaning they were
06:56hit by freezing air every time someone came in or out.
07:00Those who saw Margot noted how increasingly gaunt she became as her illness grew more
07:04and more severe, and she soon lost most of her strength. When she became too weak to
07:08get out of bed, Anne would go to the nurses at the camp and try to get ahold of fresh
07:11blankets and supplies — a necessity, considering their own had become infested with lice. Though
07:17ultimately futile, Anne's care of her sister may have helped prolong her life, even if
07:21only by a few days. And if nothing else, it was an incredible demonstration of fortitude
07:25and resilience.
07:27Brigham Belsen originally opened as a prisoner of war camp in 1940, but became a concentration
07:32camp in 1943. By January 1945, a few months after Anne's arrival, conditions there had
07:37deteriorated to the point of near collapse. The camp was becoming exceedingly overcrowded
07:42as more prisoners came in every day, a problem compounded by the poor sanitary conditions
07:46and a severe shortage of food and water.
07:49Nobody cleaned anything up. It was just a devastated place.
07:55At times, prisoners had to endure multiple days without food or water, and the guards
07:59would taunt them by leaving potentially poison delicacies in the camp. Hundreds of prisoners
08:04were dying daily towards the end, too many to cremate, and bodies began piling up around
08:08the camp. Disease spread as a result, and lice and fleas infested many camp prisoners.
08:13Due to inadequate clothing, many prisoners were also subjected to frostbite in the winter's
08:17conditions, and Anne's own quarters provided little protection against the elements.
08:22Conditions at Bergen-Belsen were so horrendous that when the British arrived to liberate
08:26the camp in April 1945, many soldiers refused to enter for fear of contracting disease.
08:31Barbed wire everywhere. Chaos. Bodies.
08:37Anne and her sister were just two of roughly 50,000 people who perished at Bergen-Belsen.
08:43When Anne and Margot Frank first arrived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, they
08:46were malnourished but active and still able to communicate with the other prisoners. According
08:50to her autobiography, Nanette Blitz Koenig talked with both Anne and Margot several times
08:55while they were imprisoned at the camp. At some point, however, the Frank sisters both
08:59came down with typhus. More than likely, they contracted the disease from body lice, which
09:03were rampant at Bergen-Belsen.
09:05Margot was sicker than Anne, as she was bedridden, while Anne was still able to leave her barracks
09:09and talk with other prisoners. Fellow prisoners at Bergen-Belsen said that Margot died before
09:13Anne did, after she fell out of her bunk and was too frail to pick herself back up.
09:18Two shared a bunk, which meant that Anne was likely just feet away from her sister when
09:22she died. If Anne was still alive and conscious, it's impossible to imagine the grief she must
09:27have felt at the loss of her sister.
09:29At first, the Dutch government listed Margot's death date as March 27, 1945, as they needed
09:34a singular date for official purposes. But researchers now speculate that she passed
09:38away in February 1945, around her would-be 19th birthday, and likely only days before
09:44Anne. Sadly, this was also mere months before Allied forces liberated Bergen-Belsen.
09:50Anne Frank's story came to a tragic end at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. At just
09:5415 years old, Anne died of typhus fever. It's not known exactly when Anne became infected,
10:00but since it takes about two to three weeks for typhus to turn fatal, she more than likely
10:04became ill in either late January or early February 1945.
10:09According to fellow prisoners, such as Rachel von Ameronen-Frankfurter, who saw Anne in
10:13the months before her death, both the illness and the camp's lack of provisions took a heavy
10:17toll. Von Ameronen-Frankfurter describes Anne as emaciated. Writing about Anne and Margot,
10:23she recalled,
10:24"...you could really see both of them dying."
10:26A few days before her death, Anne began to hallucinate due to her severe fever. Soon
10:30after, she threw out her clothes, which were infested with lice and fleas. But Anne had
10:35nothing to replace them with, forcing her to wrap herself in a single blanket as her
10:39only protection from the elements.
10:41Anne died a day or two after Margot and about two months before the camp's liberation. Initially,
10:46her date of death was listed as March 31, 1945, but historians now believe it occurred
10:50about a month and a half earlier, in mid-February.
10:54Far more importantly than her exact death date, Anne's tale of resistance and perseverance
10:58lives on as an inspiration to millions. Today, her life and her diary stand as a testament
11:03to the horrors of the Holocaust, and a reminder that such evil must never be allowed to resurface.