August 4 1944 – 15 Av 5704
Anne Frank, her parents and sister, and their companions living in the secret annex above her father’s factory were arrested in Amsterdam. Otto Frank went into hiding with his family in July 1942, and they survived there for over two years, provided for by four of Frank’s trusted employees – Miep Gies, Bep Voskiejl, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman. On the morning of August 4 1944, German uniformed police broke into the annex, led there by an informer whose identity is unknown to this day. The police were led by SS officer Karl Silberbauer, and included three Dutch police officers. After being interrogated by the Gestapo, all eight fugitives were transferred, after two days imprisonment, to Westerbok, the transit camp from which most Dutch Jews were moved to Auschwitz. Anne’s father, Otto was the only one of the group to survive. Miep Gies returned Anne’s diary to him, and its publication made her into a symbol of the lost hope and suffering of all million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust.