Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening
one of the most famous documents of the 20th
century, but we're going far beyond the familiar
narrative you might already know. We're here
to look at Anne Frank, not just as a symbol of
suffering or a victim of the Holocaust, but first
and foremost, as this, this burgeoning, ambitious
writer whose deeply private thoughts became one
of the world's most enduring testaments to human
dignity. And that distinction is so, so crucial.
When you approach her text, you have to remember
that what you're holding is the work of a teenager.
A teenager who consciously decided she wanted
to be an author. Right. She was editing. She
was shaping her manuscript, turning a personal
journal into a piece of literature, all while
living in this constant suffocating fear. So
our mission today is a bit complex. We're going
to dissect the source material we've gathered,
and that's detailed historical accounts, some
rigorous forensic studies, biographies, and,
of course, the critical editions of The Diary
of a Young Girl. Or Het Archer Horse, as it was
first known. Exactly. And we have so much to
unpack here. We're going to trace her life from
her comfortable childhood in Frankfurt all the
way to the terror of the secret annex. We'll
analyze the literary power she developed in isolation
and dive really deep into the controversies,
the betrayal, the defense of her work's authenticity.
This deep dive is really about a writer who set
a goal to live on even after her death and whose
success, born from this unimaginable tragedy,
still forces us to grapple with some of the deepest.
questions of history and memory. So our story
really begins in Frankfurt, Germany. Anne Frank,
or Anneliese Marie Frank, was born on June 12th.
1929. And her family was a firmly middle class,
right? Well -educated. Very much so. They were
part of the assimilated reformed Jewish community.
And the sources are all very consistent on this.
Otto and Edith Frank were devoted parents. They
had this huge library. I read about that. Yeah.
They really prioritized intellectual development,
encouraged both their daughters, Anne and her
older sister, Margot, in reading and scholarly
pursuits. It was a very liberal, stable upbringing.
They were really enjoying a prosperous life in
Frankfurt in an area they called the poet. quarter.
Right. The Dixter Viertel. But that whole sense
of permanence, of comfort, it was just shattered
in 1933. Utterly shattered. The political ground
shifts just violently when Adolf Hitler and the
Nazi party gain control of the government. And
that's the trigger. That is the immediate terrifying
catalyst. Otto Frank, who was known for being
pragmatic, for his foresight. He recognized the
danger early. He knew they had to get out of
Germany. So he goes on ahead to Amsterdam. He
does. In 1933, he moves there to organize a new
business, the Opecta Works, which sold tecton.
Bacton, the stuff for making jam. Exactly. A
thickening agent. And he wasn't just, you know,
getting a new job. He was actively building an
entire financial and logistical base for his
family's future, completely outside of Germany.
And this detail, the establishment of Opecta,
it's so critical because that physical space,
the warehouse, the office, that becomes the secret
annex. It's the very foundation of it. The family's
migration happened in stages, which was, you
know, pretty common for refugees at the time.
Edith and Margo arrived in Amsterdam in late
33. And then Anne, who had been staying with
her grandmother in Aiken for a bit. She follows
in February 1934. Right. And they're trying to
build a whole new life from scratch. And Amsterdam
was a pretty natural place to go. They settled
in the Rivier and Burt neighborhood on the Murritplein.
And this area became a hub for German Jewish
refugees. A lot of people were fleeing that initial
wave of Nazi persecution. The girls seem to have
settled in pretty quickly. Margot was a star
pupil and Anne joins the sixth Montessori school.
The sources really paint her as this outgoing,
popular kid. And she picked up Dutch so quickly.
That school, by the way, was renamed the Anne
Frank School in her honor in 1957. Meanwhile,
Otto is working to make them financially stable.
He starts a second company, right? Yeah, Pecticon,
in 1938. It was a wholesale business for herbs
and spices. This was a really strategic move,
trading in high -demand goods. And it's through
Pecticon that they connect with Hermann Van Pels.
The butcher who had also fled Germany. Yes, from
Osnabrück. Van Pels was hired as a spice advisor.
And it's just... It's astonishing how the practical
needs of Otto's business brought together the
eight people who would end up sharing that terrifying
confinement. But that sanctuary they found on
the Netherlands, it was so short -lived. The
trap just closes completely with the German invasion
in May 1940. Immediately. Restrictive, discriminatory
laws were implemented almost overnight. The goal
was simple. Segregate and isolate the Jewish
population. And the process was just relentless.
It was bureaucratic terror, really. It was. We
know from the records that it all culminates
in Anne losing her German citizenship in 1941.
Suddenly, she's officially stateless. And the
segregation ramps up. Jewish kids forced into
Jewish -only schools. Which meant both Anne and
Margot had to switch to the Jewish Lyceum. completing
their isolation from their Dutch friends. And
this forced isolation just underlines how desperate
things were getting. The sources show Otto was
trying everything to get them out. He was trying
to arrange emigration to the United States. That
was the only viable option left. And this, this
is where we hit one of the most heartbreaking
what -ifs in the whole story. The visa application.
Yeah, it was never processed. And the reason
why is just, it's brutal. The U .S. consulate
in Rotterdam was destroyed in a German bombing
raid on May 14, 1940. All the paperwork, including
their application, was lost in the fire. Wow.
A simple bureaucratic failure compounded by an
act of war slams the door on their last hope.
It seals their fate in Amsterdam. An immense
tragedy driven by a lost piece of paper. But
even with all this happening, with the walls
closing in, there is that one really poignant
piece of documentation we have from this period.
The famous silent film footage. Right. July 22,
1941. She's captured on film for maybe 20 seconds.
And she's just a normal teenage girl leaning
out of her second floor balcony window watching
her neighbor's wedding party. She's curious,
observing this moment of joy in the street below.
it's the only known footage of her it just freezes
her in this moment of ordinary teenage curiosity
totally unaware of the abyss she was about to
fall into it's such a powerful image of life
right before it became utterly abnormal and that
transition from an ordinary life to this extraordinary
confinement really hinges on one single very
personal object the diary She gets it for her
13th birthday, June 12, 1942. It's not a formal
journal. It's an autograph book. With that distinctive
red and white checkered cloth cover and a little
lock, she decides to use it as a diary. And she
creates this fictional confidant, Kitty, who
she addresses her letters to. And her first entries,
they immediately show the reality that's closing
in around them. Absolutely. Yeah. Even before
they go into hiding, her entry on June 20 in
1942, it details so many of the discriminatory
laws. The Yellow Star, the curfews, not being
able to use public transport, not being allowed
in non -Jewish stores. She's documenting the
very environment that's forcing them underground.
And the plan to hide was suddenly dramatically
accelerated. They were supposed to go into the
secret annex on July 16. But then Margo gives
a call -up notice from the central office for
Jewish. immigration on July 5th. She's ordered
to report for relocation to a work camp. And
the timetable just shrinks from days to hours.
So they move 10 days early on July 6th. The logistics
of that escape were so tense, so carefully planned.
They left their apartment in disarray to make
it look like they had fled suddenly. They even
left a note hinting they were going to Switzerland.
A classic misdirection to buy them some time.
A classic ruse. And because Jews were forbidden
from using any public transport. Otto, Edith,
and Anne had to walk several kilometers to the
hiding place. They would wear multiple layers
of clothes because they couldn't carry suitcases.
Margot went ahead on a bike with Miep Gies. And
the location itself, the secret annex, Het Achterhuis,
it was this three -story space tucked away behind
the main OPECTA offices on the Prinsengrat Canal.
Right. It wasn't built for hiding. It was a storage
area. But it worked, as you pointed out earlier,
precisely because of Otto Frank's business. OPECTA
was a working, bustling office. The perfect cover.
The daily bustle of a legitimate spice and pectin
business provided the perfect sound cover, drowning
out any minimal noise that eight people would
inevitably make upstairs. Plus, the business
was essential, so the four core helpers had a
reason to be there every single day. Bringing
supplies, news. Everything. And the entrance,
which everyone now knows, was later hidden by
that movable bookcase. So during those two years,
the annex housed eight people. And that close
confinement, it inevitably led to tension. Of
course. The Frank family was joined by the Van
Pels family, Herman, August, and their 16 -year
-old son, Peter, on July 13th. Then in November,
Fritz Pfeffer, a Denison family friend, moves
in. And he has to share Anne's already tiny room.
And her writing is just this brutally honest
look at life under that kind of pressure. It's
a sociological study. She found Fritz Pfeffer
insufferable. She really resented having to give
up her desk to him, and she clashed constantly
with Auguste Van Pels, calling her foolish. And
there were fights about food. Huge fights. She
saw both Herman Van Pels and Pfeffer as selfish,
especially about food, which became a bigger
and bigger issue as the war went on and rations
got tighter. But her... Honesty wasn't just reserved
for the others. She turned it on herself and
on her own family. And what's so compelling is
how her writing tracks her own growth. Especially
with her mother. That relationship was so fraught.
Initially, she writes with what she calls contempt
for her mother, Edith. She famously says, she's
not a mother to me. Which is just a searing thing
for a teenager to write. But under the weight
of that confinement, she matures. Later, when
she's revising the diary, what becomes version
B. She adds this self -criticism. She expresses
this profound shame for being so harsh to her
mother, realizing she'd just added to Edith's
suffering. It shows that incredible journey from
childlike resentment to a more adult empathy.
In a very short time. She also got closer with
Margot, and of course, there was the brief romance
with Peter Van Pels. That was such an essential
emotional outlet for her. It was a product of
their shared isolation. She got her first kiss
from him, and they would spend hours just talking
in his little room in the attic. But even then
she was so self -critical about it. She was.
She questioned if her feelings for Peter were
real love or just this desperate need for connection
because they were trapped together. She wrote
about her own sexuality, her changing body, with
just astonishing detail for the time. And that
self -awareness was directly tied to this bigger
ambition she had. I mean, they tried to maintain
some normalcy. The girls continued their studies.
Right, using correspondence courses under the
helpers' names. Margot took an elementary Latin
course in Bep Voskiel's name. Anne got great
marks. But for Anne, it was more than just grades.
It was a higher calling. She wanted to be a journalist,
a writer. And she poured everything, her deepest
feelings, her beliefs, her dreams, into that
diary. It stopped being just a record of events
and became a platform for her own self -expression.
Her ambition just leaps off the page. In that
entry from April 5, 1944, she writes, I want
to go on living even after my death. It's an
incredible statement. She was so determined not
to be forgotten. She saw writing as her gift,
a tool to express everything that was inside
her. And that self -identification as a writer,
that's what leads directly to the version of
the diary that we all read today. It's what transforms
it from a private document version A into this
consciously crafted piece of literature version
B. And the catalyst for that was a radio broadcast.
In March 1944, she hears Gerrit Bolkeskijn, a
member of the Dutch government in exile, on the
radio. And he's encouraging people to save their
letters and diaries about the oppression for
after the war. That was the pivotal moment, wasn't
it? That external validation that her private
thoughts had public value? Exactly. It spurred
her to start this massive project of editing
and rewriting her own diary for publication.
And that resulted in version B, which is a much
more structured literary text. She became a working
author. She restructured entries, expanded on
themes, revised her tone. She created the pseudonyms
Van Dan for Van Pels, Dussel for Pfeffer, and
formally addressed all her entries to Kitty.
The fact that a teenager under that kind of stress
undertook such a rigorous editorial process is
just a testament to her dedication. And none
of it, the survival of the writing, would have
been possible without the helpers. Absolutely
not. They were the essential bridge to the outside
world. The core team was Victor Kugler, Johannes
Kleiman, Mibis, and Bepp Voskyle, with support
from Miep's husband, Jan, and Bepp's father,
Johannes. And they were risking their own lives
every single day. They faced the death penalty
for sheltering Jews. Their role was life -saving,
providing food, news, managing the whole operation.
Anne felt a particular closeness with Bep Vosgeil,
who she saw as a peer, someone who brought her
little comforts and news from the outside. They
kept eight people alive and informed for 25 months.
And then Anne Frank wrote her last diary entry
on August 1st, 1944. Just three days after that
last entry, which was actually quite optimistic,
she wrote about finding balance in her life.
The secret annex was stormed. This was the morning
of August 4th, 1944, and the operation was carried
out by the German uniformed police, the Grundpolizei.
Led by an SS -Oberscharfuhrer named Karl Silberbauer.
And it's an important distinction, as you say,
that it was the uniformed police and not the
Gestapo. Silberbauer was a mid -level officer.
All eight occupants were arrested immediately.
They were taken to RSHA headquarters for interrogation,
then to a detention center in Amsterdam. Two
days later. They were on a transport to the Westerbork
transit camp, and their fate was immediately
made worse by how they were found. Because they
were arrested and hiding, they were classified
as criminals. Which meant the punishment barracks.
Hard labor. Exactly. Harsher conditions than
even the standard prisoners who were waiting
for deportation. And the helpers suffered as
well. Kugler and Kleiman were jailed. Kleiman
was released after a few weeks because of his
poor health, but... Kugler was held in various
camps until the war ended. And this is where
Mia Gies' courage just shines through. She and
Voskal went back into the annex after the police
left. They did. And they found Anne's papers
scattered all over the floor. Silber Bauer had
emptied a briefcase looking for valuables and
just dumped Anne's writings. Gies gathered everything
up, the notebooks, the loose papers, intending
to give them back to Anne when she returned.
She even tried to bribe Silber Bauer to release
them. An incredible futile act of bravery. Miep's
preservation of the diary is what sets up the
future. But the raid itself takes us to this
profound and still unresolved mystery. Who betrayed
them? This is probably the most sensitive and
debated part of the whole story. And as we look
at the sources. you have to be so critical because
there's just an overload of information, multiple
conflicting theories, and new ones are still
emerging. Right. So we have to acknowledge that
despite decades of investigation, no single theory
has ever provided definitive closure. None. So
let's walk through the four major theories and
really look at the evidence, or lack thereof,
for each one. Okay. Theory one, Nelly Vosklo.
This one gained traction around 2015. It suggests
that Nellie, the younger sister of the helper
Bette Voskoyle, was the informant. Right. She
was known to be a Nazi sympathizer, a collaborator,
and she was apparently critical of her family
for helping Jews. There are accounts of her shouting
at Bette and her father, go to your Jews. And
the main piece of evidence is that Silberbauer,
the arresting officer, reportedly said the informant
had the voice of a young woman. Precisely. Now,
theory two, ration card fraud. This came from
research published by the Anne Frank House itself
in 2016, and it suggested a totally different
focus. That the raid wasn't even about the Jews
in hiding. Potentially. The idea is that the
raid was part of an investigation into illegal
work or ration card fraud connected to the OPECTA
business. The authorities might have just stumbled
upon the annex by chance during a search. So
it removes the idea of a specific, targeted betrayal.
It does, though it doesn't rule out a general
tip about illegal activity happening at that
address. Then there's theory three, Hans Van
Dyck. This came up around 2018. She was a Dutch
Jewish woman who, under duress, became a collaborator
and betrayed at least 145 other Jews. And the
link here is an alleged testimony from a resistance
fighter who claimed he overheard her discussing
the Prinsengraft address. Yes. And finally, the
most recent and, frankly, sensational theory,
theory four. Arnold Vandenberg. This came from
a high -profile cold case investigation in 2022.
This was the one that made headlines everywhere.
It did. It proposed that Arnold Vandenberg, a
Jewish notary and a member of the Jewish council,
gave up the Franks' address to save his own family.
The book claimed this was known to Otto Frank,
but he kept it secret. The whole theory hinged
on an anonymous note that Otto supposedly received
after the war. And this is where the critical
analysis becomes so important, because the source
material is clear. This theory faced immediate,
severe, and widespread backlash from historians.
The critique was overwhelming. First, the evidence
was just condemned as far too thin. It relied
on circumstantial connections and really weak
assumptions. But more importantly, historians
immediately challenged the whole premise that
the Jewish Council even had a list of hiding
places. Right. There's no historical record of
such a list that Vandenberg could have used.
None. And then the allegations got worse, suggesting
source distortion, that the book had misinterpreted
Otto Frank's own records to fit their narrative.
The entire historical community just rejected
the idea that Otto Frank would conceal the identity
of his family's betrayer. And the publisher pulled
the book. The Dutch publisher apologized and
recalled the Dutch edition. The whole episode
is really a powerful lesson in how historical
consensus and source verification are so necessary,
especially with this kind of history. So after
almost 80 years, the mystery is still unresolved.
But regardless of how they were found, the consequence
was deportation. They were deported on September
3, 1944, on the very last transport from Westerbork
to Auschwitz. The journey took three days. It
was brutal. And upon arrival, the selection began.
Immediately. Men separated from women and children.
The sources document that out of 1 ,019 passengers,
549, including every single child under 15, were
sent directly to the gas chambers. Anne, having
just turned 15, was one of the youngest spared
from that initial selection, an arbitrary line
that saved her life for a few more months. And
the tragedy is just layered. She never found
out that the entire annex group survived that
first selection. She assumed her father, who
was separated from them moments before, was killed
immediately. Life in Auschwitz was slave labor.
Her head was shaved, her arm tattooed. She suffered
terribly from scabies. But witnesses later said
that while she had moments of withdrawal, she
also showed immense courage. And she was supported
by her mother. Edith Frank, in this incredible
act of selflessness, saved every scrap of food
she got and passed her rations to her daughters
through a hole in the infirmary wall. She eventually
died of disease and starvation in January 1945.
Anne, Margot, and Auguste Van Tells were then
transferred to Bergen -Belsen on October 28,
1944. Edith was left behind. And Bergen -Belsen
was already ravaged by disease. The conditions
were deteriorating by the hour as the war was
ending. And it's in Bergen -Belsen that we get
our last personal glimpses of her. From her childhood
friends, Hanley Goslar and Annette Blitz. They
were briefly reunited. Blitz described Ann as
bald, emaciated, and shivering. She said the
shock of seeing her was just indescribable. But
even then, Anne told them she still hoped to
write a book based on her diary. She held on
to that writer's ambition even at the very end,
but she also told them she believed her parents
were dead and that she didn't have anything left
to live for. Anne and Margot died in February
or early March of 1945. They were victims of
the typhus epidemic that swept through the camp,
killing 17 ,000 prisoners just weeks before liberation.
Margot reportedly died after falling from her
bunk in her weakened state. Anne died the day
after. The official death date was long listed
as March 31, but newer research from 2015 strongly
suggests they died much earlier, probably in
February. The scale of the loss is just immense.
Of the eight people from the annex, only one
survived, Otto Frank. He survived Auschwitz,
which was liberated by Soviet troops. He started
the long journey back to Amsterdam, arriving
in June 1945, where he was sheltered by Miep
and Jan Gies. He learned about Edith's death
on the journey home. And it was weeks later that
he finally confirmed Anne and Margot's deaths.
From the Brule's light for sisters, who had been
with them in Bergen -Belsen, a father, the sole
survivor, left with the unbearable knowledge
that his entire family was gone. Otto Frank's
return is what leads directly to the diary's
resurrection. And it was all because of Miepki's.
In July 1945, she gives him Anne's papers and
notebooks, the original diary, all the loose
sheets from version B. And the sources say Otto
was just profoundly moved. He said he had no
idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.
He realized she had kept all of this to herself.
And moved by her explicit wish to be an author,
he takes on the role of editor. He does. He meticulously
creates that first version for publication by
combining Anne's original diary, version A, with
her edited draft, version B. He restored his
own family's true identities, but kept the pseudonyms
for the others, like Van Dan and Dussel. And
this editing, it raises an important question
that people have grappled with for years. I mean
he was curating a public figure. Did his decisions
compromise the historical truth? That is the
central tension. We know the first published
version was edited, auto -removed several sections,
mainly to protect the privacy of the people who
died and to, you know, manage the narrative.
What kind of things did he remove? Mostly Anne's
really critical remarks about his strained marriage
with Edith and her very harsh discussions about
her lack of affection for her mother. The early
version presented a much more harmonious family
than her private writings really showed. The
initial impact in the Netherlands was huge, though.
It was, partly thanks to some influential endorsements.
After Otto gave the manuscript to the historian
Jan Romijn, Romijn wrote an article called Kinderstem,
A Child's Voice. And in it, he argued that the
diary embodies all the hideousness of fascism,
more so than all the evidence that Nuremberg
put together, that Achterhuis was published in
Dutch in 1947. International success came, but
it was uneven. The English edition, The Diary
of a Young Girl, was critically acclaimed in
the U .S. in 1952, but it was an initial failure
in the U .K. Really? Yeah. But its most noteworthy
success early on was in Japan. It sold over 100
,000 copies in the first edition. It just resonated
deeply with a culture still reeling from the
war. But that drive for a complete, transparent
record eventually overcame Otto's initial censorship.
It did. The missing five pages were finally found
by Cornelis Wake in 1999, long after Otto's death.
They were returned in 2001 and are now in all
the new editions, detailing more of that family
friction. And crucially, other censored sections
were added back in, relating to her sexuality.
Her exploration of her body, her thoughts on
menstruation, her developing understanding of
sex. And these inclusions really transformed
the document. It wasn't just a historical record
of persecution anymore. It was an intimate coming
-of -age story. And then there was that 2018
discovery, the two pages she had pasted over
with brown paper. Which, when they were deciphered,
contained her attempt at sex education and a
few dirty jokes. It just proved that even in
that confinement, she had this normal, inquisitive,
sometimes silly teenage mind. From a literary
standpoint, the praise has just been constant.
John Berryman, the American poet, called her
style stunning in its honesty. Eleanor Roosevelt
called it one of the wisest and most moving commentaries
on war. And this was recognized at the highest
levels. John F. Kennedy, in a speech in 1961,
said that no voice is more compelling than Anne
Frank's. And the diary quickly transcended its
historical context to become this global symbol
of resilience. This is where it connects to other
struggles. Nelson Mandela read the diary while
he was imprisoned on Robben Island. He said he
derived much encouragement from it. That's fascinating.
He saw a mirror of his own struggle against apartheid
in her struggle against Nazism. It related to
the confinement, the longing for freedom, the
belief that human dignity could survive anything.
And Hillary Clinton used her story in the 90s
to speak out against indifference, referencing
the genocides in places like Sarajevo and Rwanda.
Her voice became this universal moral yardstick.
But that symbolism created a tension, a point
that other Holocaust survivors have highlighted.
Primo Levi. Right. Primo Levi suggested that
Anne's single, identifiable face moves us more
profoundly than the millions whose faces and
stories are unknown. He recognized that we can't
process suffering on the scale of six million,
and Anne provides that necessary singular connection.
And even Miep Gai is cautioned against this.
She hated the idea that Anne symbolizes the six
million victims. She insisted on it. She emphasized
that Anne's fate was individual, her life was
cut short, her hopes were destroyed, and that
her story was simply repeated six million times
over. It's a crucial warning against abstracting
suffering into a comfortable symbol. But that
power, that recognition, made the diary an inevitable
target for denialists. Of course. Starting in
the late 1950s, especially in neo -fascist circles,
allegations of forgery started to pop up. And
that required decades of rigorous scientific
and legal defense. The defense started almost
immediately. In 1958, Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi
hunter, was challenged to prove she even existed.
So he went looking for the arresting officer,
Karl Silberbauer. And he found him in 1963 working
as a police inspector in Vienna. And he confessed.
Immediately. He admitted his role, corroborated
the entire story, including the detail of emptying
the briefcase full of her papers onto the floor.
It was the first eyewitness account from the
perpetrator's side. And Otto Frank pursued legal
action against deniers throughout the 50s and
70s. Successfully. The courts repeatedly and
legally confirmed the diary's authenticity. But
the definitive scientific proof came after Otto's
death in 1980. When the diary was willed to the
Dutch Institute for War Documentation? Right.
They commissioned a massive forensic study in
1986. This is the ultimate response to the claims
that the diary was written with, say, a modern
ballpoint pen. So what did the forensics prove
exactly? How did they do it? They analyzed the
physical evidence exhaustively. They prepped
three things. First, the paper. They authenticated
the paper, the glue, the pulp, proving it all
matched materials that were available in the
Netherlands during the war. Second, the ink.
They confirmed all the main entries were written
with ink components consistent with that time
period. And third, and most conclusively, the
handwriting. They matched samples from the diary
to known samples of Anne's handwriting from school
papers and letters, and it showed the clear development
of her script. over those two years. And all
of this was published in the critical edition.
Yes, that edition includes Anne's version A,
her version B, Otto's published version C, and
the entire 1986 forensic report. It just cemented
the diary's factual basis forever, scientifically
shutting down the arguments of forgery. The power
of her story meant that her physical location,
that building on the Prinzengracht, it couldn't
just be demolished. In 1957, a group that included
Otto Frank established the Anne Frank Foundation
to prevent its demolition. And that led to the
opening of the Anne Frank House Museum in 1960.
It did. And it's a deliberate choice that the
annex is left unfurnished, isn't it? A very deliberate
choice. It emphasizes the claustrophobic space.
It lets visitors experience the dimensions of
that confinement rather than focusing on domestic
clutter. And it remains a huge global attraction.
It was averaging about 1 .2 million visitors
a year before 2020. And beyond the physical space,
Otto Frank was very strategic about her legacy.
Very. He established the Anne Frank Fonds in
1963, a charitable foundation based in Basel,
Switzerland. And he willed the diary's copyright
to the Fonds when he died. And what does that
foundation focus on today? It's not just managing
money, is it? No, absolutely not. Its primary
focus is active educational engagement. fighting
racism, discrimination, supporting human rights
projects globally. They'd administer the copyright,
they'd loan her papers for exhibition, and they
made sure her story is used responsibly in schools.
They are the institutional force fighting revisionism
today. And the other physical spaces are still
being memorialized, that Marita Plain apartment
where they lived before the annex? It was restored
in the 2000s, and now it houses a writer -in
-residence program for writers who can't work
freely in their own countries. That's a beautiful
direct link between her... confinement and the
contemporary need for free expression. It really
is. And her legacy is just central to Dutch culture.
She's one of the 50 topics in the canon of the
Netherlands, which is the list of things considered
essential for teaching Dutch school kids. Her
name is recognized everywhere. There are over
270 schools worldwide named after her. A hundred
in Germany alone. But I think maybe the most
poignant piece of the legacy is the Anne Frank
tree. The horse chestnut tree she could see from
the annex window. It was her one living view
of the outside world, a symbol of freedom and
hope. She writes about it in the diary, The Changing
Seasons. But that tree faced its own tragedy.
It did. By 2007, it was severely diseased and
was scheduled to be cut down. There was this
huge international outcry. A Dutch economist
said, this is not just any tree. The Anne Frank
tree is bound up with the persecution of the
Jews. So they built a steel construction to try
and save it. A desperate attempt. But tragically,
gale force winds blew it down in August 2010.
But its lineage continues, and that's such a
powerful metaphor. Eleven saplings, grown from
the tree, were distributed to significant sites
across the United States. Where are they planted?
In places chosen for their symbolism. Liberty
Park in Manhattan, which honors 9 -11 victims.
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. The physical
continuity of that one tree that Anne saw from
her window has now spread across continents,
reinforcing this idea that resilience and renewal
are possible, even after such a profound loss.
Her global recognition just keeps growing. Time
magazine named her one of the most important
people of the century. An asteroid was named
after her. Asteroid 5535 Anna Frank. The entire
world, in so many different ways, has recognized
that this one voice holds this profound, enduring
significance. So when you synthesize the whole
arc of her life, the refugee, the writer in isolation,
the tragic victim and then this posthumous literary
giant, you're left with this powerful paradox.
Her life was cut brutally short. But she achieved
her most fervent ambition. I want to go on living
even after my death. And her success came from
the sheer literary power of her writing, that
brutal honesty, the self -critical maturation.
She gives us a window into history that is so
individual and yet somehow. globally universal.
But her story also reminds us of the enduring
complexities of historical investigation, the
unresolved mystery of the betrayal, the decades
-long forensic defense required to protect her
work from denialists. And I think the key takeaway,
the lesson that her keepers and historians always
try to impart, is that tension between the symbol
and the individual. We talked about Miep Gies,
who was so careful to remind us that Anne's fate,
while it serves as this powerful symbol, was
ultimately an individual one. She was one girl
with one name and one terrible fate. Exactly.
So you have to consider what it means to truly
understand the Holocaust through the eyes of
one single, deeply personal voice. And Frank's
diary is our access point to the unimaginable.
It lets us connect with the human scale of the
six million, which forces you to ask. If her
individual struggle was repeated six million
times over, then what responsibilities does that
knowledge place upon us, the learners? I think
it means we have to use the single voice we've
been given, the one voice that survived, to honor
the millions of others whose voices we lost,
whose individual stories are silent and unknown.
So her story shouldn't replace the suffering
of the six million. No. It should be the lens
through which we actively acknowledge the profound,
unique loss of every single other person. That's
a profound thought to end on, using the voice
we have been given to honor the voices we lost.
Thank you for joining us for the deep dive.