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From the Annex to Auschwitz: The Final Journey of the Eight
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
On August 4, 1944, the Gestapo arrived at 263 Prinsengracht and the two-year hiding ended in minutes — but the story of Anne Frank's arrest, the diary pages Miep Gies rescued from the floor, and the cattle car that left Westerbork for Auschwitz is more harrowing than most people know. This chapter traces every step from that single morning to the gates of Birkenau.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Everything that followed came down to one morning. August fourth, nineteen forty-four.
To understand the weight of that morning, you need to understand what preceded it. In previous episodes, we covered how Anne Frank received a red-checkered diary on her thirteenth birthday, June twelfth, nineteen forty-two, and how her family was forced into hiding just weeks later when her sister Margot received a summons to report to a labor camp.
The Gestapo arrived at Prinsengracht early on August fourth. They came with Dutch police officers assisting them.
Miep Gies was one of the helpers. She worked in Otto Frank's office below the Annex.
After the arrest, all eight residents of the Secret Annex were taken to Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam for processing. From there, they were transported to Westerbork, a transit camp in the northeastern Netherlands that served as a collection point before deportation east.
The train reached Auschwitz-Birkenau on the night of September fifth. Selection began on the platform.
In October and November of nineteen forty-four, as Soviet forces advanced toward Auschwitz from the east, the Nazis began evacuating some prisoners westward. Anne and Margot were among those transferred.
Margot died first. Then Anne.
Otto Frank was liberated from Auschwitz by Soviet forces on January twenty-seventh, nineteen forty-five, the same week Anne and Margot were dying at Bergen-Belsen. He made his way back to Amsterdam over the following months.
The line most associated with Anne Frank is this: "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." She wrote it in July of nineteen forty-four, two weeks before the last diary entry, five weeks before the arrest. She wrote it knowing the conditions outside.
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