In July 1942, when transports from the Westerbork transit camp to Auschwitz began, the family went into hiding together with the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer. The hiding place of these eight people was an attic at 263 Prisengracht Street in Amsterdam, the building that contained Otto’s business. For two years, from June 1942, when Anne received a diary for her thirteenth birthday, until she was about fifteen, Anne wrote in her diary nearly every day. Once the hiding place was discovered on August 4, 1944, the diary entries stopped.
Ever since the Auschwitz memorial and museum first opened to the public, in 1947, workers have repaired and rebuilt the place. The barbed wire that rings the camps must be continuously replaced as it rusts. In the 1950s, construction crews repairing the crumbling gas chamber at the main Auschwitz camp removed one of the original walls. Most recently, the staff has had to deal with crime and vandalism. This past December, the Arbeit Macht Frei sign was stolen by thieves, who intended to sell it to a collector. Although the sign was recovered, it was cut into three pieces and will need to be repaired.
It is surprising to me that inmates make any attempt to escape. Already in the first hours of our stay we could convince ourselves of the hopelessness of such an undertaking, being lined up as we were along the inner wall. The watchtowers were occupied by S.S. men with machine guns, and during the darkness rays of searchlights played from them. The guards in the watchtowers, provided with field glasses, were able to see each inmate who might move outside the barracks during the night hours, and they had strict orders to fire at an offender at once. Aside from these guards, mechanical contraptions made escape almost impossible. On the inner sides of the two encircling walls there were tall wire fences charged with a high-voltage current. Inside the wire fence there was a small strip of gravel, in front of which were signs bearing skull and crossbones and this inscription: 'Caution neutral zone.' The guards were instructed to shoot without warning at anybody entering this zone.

Prior to the Nazi ascension to power, Hitler often blamed moral degradation on Rassenschande ("racial defilement"), a way to assure his followers of his continuing antisemitism, which had been toned down for popular consumption.[96] Prior to the induction of the Nuremberg Race Laws in 1935 by the Nazis, many German nationalists such as Roland Freisler strongly supported laws to ban Rassenschande between Aryans and Jews as racial treason.[96] Even before the laws were officially passed, the Nazis banned sexual relations and marriages between party members and Jews.[97] Party members found guilty of Rassenschande were severely punished; some party members were even sentenced to death.[98]
Anneliese (Annelies) Marie Frank was born June 12, 1929 to Otto and Edith (Holländer) Frank in Frankfurt, Germany. Her older sister, Margot, was born February 16, 1926. Her father, Otto, was an officer in the German army during World War I on the Western Front and began working for the family bank in Aachen, Germany, after returning from the war. The bank collapsed in the early 1930s during Germany’s economic depression, a depression that further enflamed long-standing anti-Semitism and gave rise to Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party—the Nazis.
In 1934, Hitler told his military leaders that a war in the east should begin in 1942.[56] The Saarland, which had been placed under League of Nations supervision for 15 years at the end of World War I, voted in January 1935 to become part of Germany.[57] In March 1935, Hitler announced the creation of an air force, and that the Reichswehr would be increased to 550,000 men.[58] Britain agreed to Germany building a naval fleet with the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement on 18 June 1935.[59]
In 1976, Otto Frank took action against Heinz Roth of Frankfurt, who published pamphlets stating that the diary was "a forgery". The judge ruled that if Roth was to publish any further statements he would be subjected to a fine of 500,000 German marks and a six-month jail sentence. Roth appealed against the court's decision. He died in 1978, and after a year his appeal was rejected.[94]

Pankoke started working for the FBI in the 1980s, spending his first four years as an agent in a small field office in Wisconsin. In 1992, he was transferred to Miami, where he helped build cases against Colombian cartels. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he was involved in FBI undercover operations, including cases that took him out of the country, he said.

In June 1999, Time magazine published a special edition titled "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century". Anne Frank was selected as one of the "Heroes & Icons", and the writer, Roger Rosenblatt, described her legacy with the comment, "The passions the book ignites suggest that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism, girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world—the moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live and question and hope for the future of human beings." He notes that while her courage and pragmatism are admired, her ability to analyse herself and the quality of her writing are the key components of her appeal. He writes, "The reason for her immortality was basically literary. She was an extraordinarily good writer, for any age, and the quality of her work seemed a direct result of a ruthlessly honest disposition."[91]


^ Jump up to: a b Lichtblau, Eric (March 1, 2013). "The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 June 2014. When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500. For the map of more that 1,000 locations, see: Map of Ghettos for Jews in Eastern Europe. The New York Times. Source: USHMM.
In spite of efforts to prepare the country militarily, the economy could not sustain a lengthy war of attrition. A strategy was developed based on the tactic of Blitzkrieg ("lightning war"), which involved using quick coordinated assaults that avoided enemy strong points. Attacks began with artillery bombardment, followed by bombing and strafing runs. Next the tanks would attack and finally the infantry would move in to secure the captured area.[225] Victories continued through mid-1940, but the failure to defeat Britain was the first major turning point in the war. The decision to attack the Soviet Union and the decisive defeat at Stalingrad led to the retreat of the German armies and the eventual loss of the war.[226] The total number of soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht from 1935 to 1945 was around 18.2 million, of whom 5.3 million died.[150]

After Nazi Germany unleashed World War II in September 1939, vast new territorial conquests and larger groups of potential prisoners led to the rapid expansion of the concentration camp system to the east. The war did not change the original function of the concentration camps as detention sites for the incarceration of political enemies. The climate of national emergency that the conflict granted to the Nazi leaders, however, permitted the SS to expand the functions of the camps.
Of course, there were aspects of Nazism which were reactionary, such as their attitude toward the role of women in society, which was completely traditionalist,[284] calling for the return of women to the home as wives, mothers and homemakers, although ironically this ideological policy was undermined in reality by the growing labor shortages and need for more workers. The number of women in the workplace climbed throughout the period of Nazi control of Germany, from 4.24 million in 1933 to 4.52 million in 1936 and 5.2 million in 1938, numbers that far exceeded those of the Weimar Republic.[285]
I was not even two when we arrived at Auschwitz in 1944. I have no conscious memories of that time, but plenty of subconscious ones. My mother told me later how when they tattooed my arm with a needle, it was so painful that I passed out. The number they gave me and that I still have was A26959. My mother’s ended in 8. I was probably the youngest child to have been tattooed who survived.
Auschwitz didn’t long remain a camp exclusively for Poles. In June 1941, Germany launched a surprise invasion of the Soviet Union, taking three million prisoners over the next seven months. Many were starved to death. Others were sent to occupied Poland or Germany as slave laborers. In the fall of 1941, ten thousand prisoners of war arrived at Auschwitz and began building the Birkenau camp.
Before beginning Jewish exterminations, though, the Nazi’s used the Soviet POWs at the Auschwitz camp in trials of the poison gas Zyklon-B, produced by the German company “Degesch” (Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Schädlingsbekämpfung), which was marked as the best way to kill many people at once. The POWs were gassed in underground cells in Block 11, the so called “Death Block,” and following these trials, one gas chamber was setup just outside the main camp and two temporary gas chambers were opened at Birkenau.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau), ul. Stanisławy Leszczyńskiej 11, ☎ +48 33 844 80 99 ([email protected]), [1]. January, November 8:00-15:00; February 8:00-16:00; March, October 7:30-17:00; April, May, September 7:30-18:00; June, July, August 7:30-19:00; December 8:00-14:00. The entrance to Auschwitz I is home to the Auschwitz State Museum, which presents a 15 minute film, shot by Soviet troops the day after the camp's liberation. The film costs 3.5PLN to view (and is included in the price of a guided tour). Showings are between 11:00 and 17:00 (in English at the top of the hour and Polish at the half hour). Highly recommended, but disturbing and not suitable for small children. Bookstores and bathrooms are here. Also consider buying a guidebook or map for 5PLN. General entrance free; guides 30-330PLN.  edit

Otto had prepared a secret hideout next to his place of work. The door was hidden behind some bookshelves. The hideout was small. The first floor had a bathroom and a small kitchen. The second floor had two rooms, one for Anne and Margot and one for her parents. There was also an attic where they stored food and where Anne would sometimes go to be alone.

A survey published last summer by the American Press Institute revealed that forty-two per cent of the public thinks that “most of the news reporting they see is opinion and commentary posing as news reporting.” An additional seventeen per cent said that there was too much analysis. People wanted facts, they wanted them “verified,” and, though they wanted some background and context, they mostly wanted to be allowed to come to their own conclusions. For many journalists reporting on the new right in the U.S. and Europe, it may be difficult to shake the feeling that this is somehow irresponsible. There is a strong argument to be made that anyone who professes bigotry and hatred doesn’t deserve to be considered seriously, let alone objectively. But that could preclude us from understanding the social circumstances that led to someone such as Richard Spencer, a figurehead of the alt-right, attaining a platform in the first place. If reporters do engage, what is to be done about the strong desire to condemn their subjects?
The Nazi Party grew significantly during 1921 and 1922, partly through Hitler's oratorical skills, partly through the SA's appeal to unemployed young men, and partly because there was a backlash against socialist and liberal politics in Bavaria as Germany's economic problems deepened and the weakness of the Weimar regime became apparent. The party recruited former World War I soldiers, to whom Hitler as a decorated frontline veteran could particularly appeal, as well as small businessmen and disaffected former members of rival parties. Nazi rallies were often held in beer halls, where downtrodden men could get free beer. The Hitler Youth was formed for the children of party members. The party also formed groups in other parts of Germany. Julius Streicher in Nuremberg was an early recruit and became editor of the racist magazine Der Stürmer. In December 1920, the Nazi Party had acquired a newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, of which its leading ideologist Alfred Rosenberg became editor. Others to join the party around this time were Heinrich Himmler and World War I flying ace Hermann Göring.
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.[13] Otto Frank tried to arrange for the family to emigrate to the United States – the only destination that seemed to him to be viable[14] – 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.[15] 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.[14]
In May 14, 1940, the Netherlands surrendered to Germany after the bombing of Rotterdam, having being invaded just five days earlier. The following month, Anne turned 10. The restrictions and persecution the Franks had faced in Germany were brought to their new home. Otto transferred control of his businesses to trusted colleagues to make the business appear Aryan-owned and to avoid having to register it with the German authorities. The family had to register as Jews with the German authorities in January 1942 and all Dutch Jews were ordered to Amsterdam.
As early as February 1933, Hitler announced that rearmament must begin, albeit clandestinely at first, as to do so was in violation of the Versailles Treaty. On 17 May 1933, Hitler gave a speech before the Reichstag outlining his desire for world peace and accepted an offer from American President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military disarmament, provided the other nations of Europe did the same.[53] When the other European powers failed to accept this offer, Hitler pulled Germany out of the World Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October, claiming its disarmament clauses were unfair if they applied only to Germany.[54] In a referendum held in November, 95 percent of voters supported Germany's withdrawal.[55]
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1912) is an antisemitic forgery created by the secret service of the Russian Empire, the Okhrana. Many antisemites believed it was real and thus it became widely popular after World War I.[92] The Protocols claimed that there was a secret international Jewish conspiracy to take over the world.[93] Hitler had been introduced to The Protocols by Alfred Rosenberg and from 1920 onwards he focused his attacks by claiming that Judaism and Marxism were directly connected, that Jews and Bolsheviks were one and the same and that Marxism was a Jewish ideology-this became known as "Jewish Bolshevism".[94] Hitler believed that The Protocols were authentic.[95]

^ Jump up to: a b Franz H. Mautner (1944). "Nazi und Sozi". Modern Language Notes. 59 (2): 93–100. doi:10.2307/2910599. JSTOR 2910599. Dass Nazi eine Abkürzung von Nationalsozialist ist … [u]nd zwar eine Verkürzung des Wortes auf seine ersten zwei Silben, aber nicht eine Zusammenziehung aus Nationalsozialist' …[… that Nazi is an abbreviation of Nationalsozialist … and to be precise a truncation of the word to its first two syllables, not a contraction of Nationalsozialist' …]
In July 1945, after the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of the Frank sisters, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank the diary and a bundle of loose notes that she had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realized Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding. In his memoir, he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognizing the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter. He saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting, "For me it was a revelation ... I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings ... She had kept all these feelings to herself".[65] Moved by her repeated wish to be an author, he began to consider having it published.[66]
Most of the book is about the privations and hardship of living hidden away in the "annex". There is very little coverage of the violence of the times or much that is going on in the outside world because they had little knowledge of it since they were hidden. I think this is partly why some schoolchildren report the diary is boring. It does get repetitive at times, which reflects the feelings of those living in hiding. They had to wait and wait in fear, not knowing what the next day would bring.
In 1940, the Nazis used carbon monoxide gas in secret euthanasia programs at mental hospitals in Germany to eliminate mentally ill or disabled people. From there, it was but a small step to Zyklon B, a cyanide compound designed for delousing. In September 1941, Auschwitz guards herded hundreds of Soviet POWs and sick inmates into the crudely sealed basement of Block 11, the dreaded punishment barrack; a guard threw in pellets of Zyklon B and shut the doors. They were the first people gassed at Auschwitz.

But Auschwitz—with its 155 buildings and hundreds of thousands of artifacts—is deteriorating. It is a conservation challenge like no other. “Our main problem is sheer numbers,” Jolanta Banas, the head of preservation, tells me as we walk through the white-tiled facility where she and her 48-member staff work. “We measure shoes in the ten thousands.”
Although all SS units wore the Death's-Head symbol (skull and crossbones) on their caps, only the SS Death's-Head Units were authorized to wear the Death's Head Symbol on their lapels. The “SS Death's-Head Division” of the Waffen SS was created in 1940. Its officers were recruited from concentration camp service. They also wore the Death's-Head symbol on their lapel.