USA/FILE: Newly discovered letters reveal the efforts made by Anne Frank's father to escape from Nazi-occupied Holland

Record ID: 722298

  • Title: USA/FILE: Newly discovered letters reveal the efforts made by Anne Frank's father to escape from Nazi-occupied Holland
  • Date: 17th February 2007
  • Summary: (L!2) AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS (FILE) (REUTERS) STREET WHERE ANNE FRANK HOUSE SITS VARIOUS EXTERIORS OF ANNE FRANK HOUSE (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 4th March 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: History
  • Reuters ID: LVAC06MTL8203YZ3YQGISA18M2D4
  • Story Text: Anne Frank's father tried to obtain a visa to the United States and flee Nazi-occupied Holland, according to documents uncovered in New York City. Otto Frank wrote to his college friend, whose family owned Macy's department store, requesting money and aide to escape.
    Anne Frank's father sought help and money from the family that owned Macy's department store in a desperate bid to get his Jewish family out of Nazi Europe, according to documents released on Wednesday (February 14).
    "It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our own fate is of less importance," Otto Frank wrote in a letter to Nathan Straus Jr. dated April 30, 1941. In the letter, Frank sought assistance and $5,000 from Strauss, whose father owned Macy's.
    The documents were put on display by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which discovered the correspondence in its archives. Executive Director of YIVO, Carl Rheins said that the discovery was a revolutionary one.
    "I think first of all, it fills in for millions and millions of people throughout the world who have read Anne Frank and they see her and her father as an icon to understanding the Holocaust, these letters fill a very vital chapter on that level, telling us a different aspect of the family's history under the Nazi's. Something, I repeat, we had no knowledge of until the file was discovered," said Rheins.
    The letters, telegrams, and government documents show Otto Frank enlisted Strauss, who was the head of the U.S. Housing Authority and Frank's college friend, to help secure passage out of Europe with his wife, mother-in-law, and two daughters, Margot and Anne.
    Strauss and his wife used their government contacts and made several appeals on behalf of the Franks, but despite their best efforts, the Franks were not issued an American visa due to the vast number of refugees seeking a safe haven in the U.S. and a drastic tightening of the U.S. immigration policy.
    Rheins said that the letters provide an understanding of how decisions by the American government prevented many Jews from fleeing the Nazis. He said, "We have in a more general way, a better understanding, not the only understanding, but a much better understanding of how the decision of bureaucrats, policy makers, political leaders in Washington, effected the lives of ordinary people thousands of miles away in Europe who were desperately seeking to leave Nazi occupied Europe."
    The 80 pages of letters were discovered 18 months ago among millions of YIVO documents. The organization did not make them public until it could resolve copyright issues.
    In the summer of 1942, the Frank family went into hiding in a house in Amsterdam where they remained for two years. It was during those two years that Anne Frank kept her famous diary, before being discovered by the Nazis and sent to Aushwitz.
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