Frank was born Annelies[1] or Anneliese[2] Marie Frank on 12 June 1929 at the Maingau Red Cross Clinic[4] in Frankfurt, Germany, to Edith (née Holländer) and Otto Heinrich Frank. She had an older sister, Margot.[5] The Franks were liberal Jews, and did not observe all of the customs and traditions of Judaism.[6] They lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various religions. Edith and Otto were devoted parents, who were interested in scholarly pursuits and had an extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read.[7] [8]At the time of Anne's birth the family lived in a house at Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt-Dornbusch, where they rented two floors. In 1931 the family moved to Ganghoferstrasse 24 in a fashionable liberal area of Dornbusch called the Dichterviertel (Poets' Quarter). Both houses still exist.[9]
Anne Frank's birthplace, the Maingau Red Cross Clinic
A four-story, brick apartment block showing the building's facade, with several windows and an internal staircase leading into the block.
The apartment block on the Merwedeplein where the Frank family lived from 1934 until 1942
In 1933, after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won the federal election and Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Reich, Edith Frank and the children went to stay with Edith's mother Rosa in Aachen. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organize the business and to arrange accommodations for his family.[10] He began working at the Opekta Works, a company that sold the fruit extract pectin. Edith travelled back and forth between Aachen and Amsterdam and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in the Rivierenbuurt neighbourhood of Amsterdam, where more Jewish-German refugees settled.[11] In late December 1933, Edith followed her husband together with Margot. Anne stayed with her grandmother until February, when the family was reunited in the Netherlands.[12] The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939.[13]
After moving to Amsterdam, Anne and Margot Frank were enrolled in school—Margot in public school and Anne in a Montessori school. Despite initial problems with the Dutch language, Margot became a star pupil in Amsterdam. Anne soon felt at home at the Montessori school and met children of her own age, like Hannah Goslar, who would later become one of her best friends.[14]
In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company, Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts, and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages.[15][16] Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. A Jewish butcher, he had fled Osnabrück with his family.[16] In 1939, Edith Frank's mother came to live with the Franks, and remained with them until her death in January 1942.[17]
In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon followed.[17] Otto Frank tried to arrange for the family to emigrate to the United States – the only destination that seemed to him to be viable[18] – but Frank's application for a visa was never processed, due to circumstances such as the closing of the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam and the loss of all the paperwork there, including the visa application.[19] Even if it had been processed, the U.S. government at the time was concerned that people with close relatives still in Germany could be blackmailed into becoming Nazi spies.[18]
Explanation:
efore going into hiding
For her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, Frank received a book she had bought with her father or/and mother in a shop some time earlier. [20] It was an autograph book, bound with red-and-white checkered cloth[21] and with a small lock on the front. Frank decided she would use it as a diary,[22] and she began writing in it almost immediately. In her entry dated 20 June 1942, she lists many of the restrictions placed upon the lives of the Dutch Jewish population.[23]
Otto and Edith Frank planned to go into hiding with the children on 16 July 1942, but when Margot received a call-up notice from the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) on 5 July, ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp, they were forced to move the plan ten days forward.[24] Shortly before going into hiding, Anne gave her friend and neighbour Toosje Kupers a book, a tea set, and a tin of marbles. On 6 July the Frank family left a note for the Kupers, asking them to take care of their cat Moortje. As the Associated Press reports: "'I'm worried about my marbles, because I'm scared they might fall into the wrong hands,' Kupers said Anne told her. 'Could you keep them for me for a little while?'"[25]
