Anne Frank

On Friday morning, August 4, 1944, a German police officer accompanied by four men in civilian clothes entered the building. The men had been told of the families in hiding And they knew exactly where to go to find them. No one knows who the informer was.

The police emptied the satchel in which Anne kept her diaries, notebooks and photographs so they could use it to carry away food and valuables. The papers and photos were recovered later by Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, two of the Dutch Christians who courageously kept the occupants alive (the others were Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, and Jan Gies).

Anne and her group were first sent to the Westerbork transit camp. In September they were transported to the extermination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau where Anne's mother and Herman van Pels died very soon. Peter van Pels perished in Mauthausen. Auguste van Pels died somewhere in or near Theresienstadt. Anne and Margo were sent to Bergen-Belsen camp, where in March 1945, they died ...