80: Hidden & Helpers

The Fate of the Hidden:

(Top Row: Left To Right: Otto Frank, Edith Frank, Margot Frank and Anne Frank

Middle Row: Left To Right: Hermann Van Pels, Auguste Van Pels, Peter Van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer

Bottom Row: Left To Right: Miep Gies, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskujil)

Otto Frank (May 12, 1889 – August 19, 1980), (Anne and Margot's Father, and Husband to Edith) was in poor health, due primarily to malnutrition, when he was left behind in Auschwitz with the rest of those in the Sick Barracks, when the Nazis evacuated all the other Prisoners on a 'Death March'. He survived until the Russians liberated Auschwitz shortly afterward. In 1953, he married Elfride "Fritzi" Markovits-Geiringer, an Auschwitz Survivor who lost her first Husband and her Son when they, too, were sent on a Death March out of Auschwitz, and whose Daughter Eva, also a Survivor, was a neighborhood Friend of the Frank Sisters'. Otto devoted his life to spreading the message of his Daughter and her diary, as well as to defending it against Neo-Nazi claims that it was a forgery or fake. He died in Birsfelden, Switzerland from lung cancer, on 19 August 1980 at the age of 91. His Widow, Fritzi, continued his work until her own death in October 1998.

Edith Frank (January 16, 1900 – January 6, 1945), (Anne and Margot's Mother, and Otto's Wife) was left behind in Auschwitz-Birkenau when her Daughters and Auguste van Pels were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, as her health had started to deteriorate.  On October 30, 1944, a Selection separated Edith from Anne and Margot. Edith was Selected for the Gas Chambers, and her Daughters were transported to Bergen-Belsen. Edith escaped with a Friend to another section of the Camp, where she remained through the Winter. While here she hid every scrap of food she got and saved it for her Daughters. Because she refused to eat any of the food she was saving for her Daughters, she died from Starvation on January 6, 1945, 21 days before the Red Army liberated the Camp and 10 days before her 45th Birthday. Her Daughters outlived her by one month.

Margot Frank, (February 16, 1926 – February/March/April 1945) like her younger Sister Anne, died of Typhus in Bergen-Belsen. According to recollections of several Eyewitnesses, this occurred "a few days" before Anne's death, most likely in early-mid February 1945, though like Anne's death, the exact date is not known.

Hermann van Pels, (March 31, 1898 – October 1944), known as Hermann (Hans in the first manuscript) van Daan in Anne's diary, died in Auschwitz, being the first of the eight to die. He was the only member of the Group to be gassed. However, according to Eyewitness testimony, this did not happen on the day he arrived there. Sal de Liema, an Inmate at Auschwitz who knew both Otto Frank and Hermann van Pels, said that after two or three days in the Camp, Van Pels mentally "gave up", which was generally the beginning of the end for any Concentration Camp Inmate. He later injured his thumb on a work detail and requested to be sent to the Sick Barracks. Soon after that, during a sweep of the sick barracks for Selection, he was sent to the Gas Chambers. This occurred about three weeks after his arrival at Auschwitz, most likely in very early October of 1944, and his Selection was witnessed by both his Son Peter and by Otto Frank.

Auguste van Pels (September 29, 1900 – April 1945), (Petronella van Daan in Anne's diary), born Auguste Röttgen (Hermann's Wife), whose date and place of death are unknown. Witnesses testified that she was with the Frank Sisters during part of their time in Bergen-Belsen, but that she was not present when they died in February/March. According to German records (her Registration Card), Mrs. Van Pels was sent to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany with a group of eight Women on November 26, 1944. Hannah Goslar's testimony was that she spoke to Mrs. Van Pels through the barbed wire fence "in late January or early February". Auguste was transferred on February 6, 1945 to Raguhn (Buchenwald in Germany), then to the Czechoslovakia Camp Theresienstadt Ghetto on April 9, 1945. This same Card lists her as being alive on April 11, 1945. As such, she must have died en route to Theresienstadt or shortly after her arrival there, the date of her death occurring most likely the either the first half or mid-April 1945, but before May 8, 1945, when the Camp was liberated. Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder, eyewitness of Auguste's death, states that the Nazis murdered her by throwing her on the train tracks during her last transport to Theresienstadt in April of 1945.

Peter van Pels (November 8, 1926 – May 10, 1945), (Hermann and Auguste's Son, known as Peter van Daan in Anne's diary and Alfred van Daan in her first manuscript) died in Mauthausen. Otto Frank had protected him during their period of imprisonment together, as the two Men had been assigned to the same work group. Frank later stated that he had urged Peter to hide in Auschwitz and remain behind with him, rather than set out on a Forced March, but Peter believed he would have a better chance of survival if he joined the Death March out of Auschwitz. Mauthausen Concentration Camp records indicate that Peter van Pels was registered upon his arrival there on January 25, 1945. Four days later, he was placed in an outdoor Labor Group, Quarz. On 11 April 1945, Peter was sent to the Sick Barracks. His exact death date is unknown, but the International Red Cross designated it as May 10, 1945, five days after Mauthausen was liberated by men from the 11th Armored Division of the U.S. Third Army. He was 18 years old and was the last member of the Group to die while imprisoned.

Fritz Pfeffer (April 30, 1889 – December 20, 1944), (who was the Family Dentist of Miep Gies and the van Pels),  Albert Dussel in Anne's diary, died on 20 December 1944 in Neuengamme Concentration Camp. His cause of death was listed in the Camp Records as "enterocolitis", a catch-all term that covered, among other things, Dysentery and Cholera, both of which were common causes of death in the Camps. Of all the stressful relationships precipitated by living in such close proximity with each other for two years, the relationship between Anne and Fritz Pfeffer was one of the most difficult for both, as her diary shows.

The Helpers:

 Miep Gies Saved Anne Frank's diary without reading it. She later said that if she had read it, she would have needed to destroy it, as it contained a great deal of incriminating information, such as the names of all of the annex helpers, as well as many of their Dutch Underground contacts. She and her Husband, Jan, took Otto Frank into their home, where he lived from 1945 (after his liberation from Auschwitz Concentration Camp) until 1952. In 1994, she received the "Order of Merit" of the Federal Republic of Germany, and in 1995, received the highest honor from the Yad Vashem, the Righteous Among the Nations. She was appointed a "Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau" by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. In 1996, Gies shared an Academy Award with Jon Blair for their documentary Anne Frank Remembered (1995), based largely on Gies' 1987 book of the same title. She also wrote the afterword for Melissa Müller's biography of Anne Frank. Gies stated that every year she spent the entire day of 4 August in mourning, the date those in the Annex were arrested. Gies died on January 11, 2010, following a short illness, at the age of 100.

Jan Gies (Miep's Husband) was a social worker and, for part of the war, a member of the Dutch Resistance; thus, he was able to procure things for the people in the Annex that would have been almost impossible to obtain any other way. He left the Underground in 1944, when an incident caused him to believe his safety had been compromised. Jan died of complications from Diabetes on 26 January 1993 in Amsterdam. He and Miep had been married for 51 years.

Johannes Kleiman spent about six weeks in a Work Camp after his arrest and was released after intervention from the Red Cross, because of his fragile health. He returned to Opekta and took over the firm when Otto Frank moved to Basel in 1952. He died at his office desk of a stroke in 1959, aged 62.

Victor Kugler spent seven months in various Work Camps and escaped into a farm field in March 1945, during the confusion that resulted when the Prisoner March he was on that day was strafed by British Spitfires. Working his way back to his hometown of Hilversum on foot and by bicycle, he remained in hiding there until liberated by Canadian Troops a few weeks later. After his Wife died, he emigrated to Canada in 1955 (where several of his Relatives already lived) and resided in Toronto. On September 16, 1958 he appeared on "To Tell the Truth", as "the hider" of Otto and Anne Frank. He received the "Medal of the Righteous" from Yad Vashem Memorial, with a tree planted in his honor on the Boulevard of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1973. He died on 16 December 1981 in Toronto, after a long illness, at the age of 81.

Bep Voskuijl, like her colleagues, was instructed to stay in the office on the day the Franks were forced from their Hiding Place, but in the confusion that followed Bep managed to escape with a few documents which would have incriminated their black market contacts. Bep and Miep found Anne's diaries and papers after the eight prisoners, together with Kugler and Kleiman, had been arrested and removed from the building. Bep left Opekta shortly after the war and married Cornelius van Wijk in 1946. While she did grant an interview to a Dutch magazine some years after the war, she mostly shunned publicity. However, Bep kept her own scrapbook of Anne-related articles throughout her life. Bep and her husband had four children, the last a daughter whom she named "Anne Marie", in honor of Anne. Bep died in Amsterdam on 6 May 1983.

Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, Bep's Father, was lauded constantly by the eight in hiding as a tremendous help with all matters during their early days in the Achterhuis. For example, he designed and built the "swinging bookcase" that concealed the entrance to the Annex. However, Anne often mentioned his health problems in her diary, and he became incapacitated after a diagnosis of abdominal cancer. He ultimately died of the disease in late November 1945, and Otto Frank attended his funeral on December 1st.