What happened next? Answers to frequently asked questions

How did the arrest really happen? The movie version is the most accurate.

The last diary entry was August 1, 1944. The play version made up the August 4th entry.

The arresting officer, Karl Silberbauer, was told by his commanding officer that he had received a tip and to go and investigate. His superior officer, Julius Dettmann, who had originally taken the call, committed suicide immediately after the war.

We have no idea who called Julius Dettmann.

Silberbauer spent two years in jail and then was used by the West German intelligence service to infiltrate neo-Nazi and Pro-Soviet organizations

Who turned the families in? Possible suspects:

Willem Van Maaren (creepy guy) - Two police investigations - one immediately after the war and another in the 1960s - turned up nothing and Van Maaren died in 1971 professing his innocence.

Anton Ahlers - business associate of Otto's and a committed Nazi.

Lena Hartog – the cleaning lady in the warehouse

What happened to the helpers? Victor Kugler (June 5,

1900– December 16, 1981, in Toronto)

Kugler was arrested and interrogated at the Gestapo Headquarters, then transferred the same day to a prison for Jews and 'political prisoners' awaiting deportation. He was taken to several concentration camps.

In April 1945 there was a bombing raid during the forced march and Kugler took advantage of the confusion to escape. He was hidden by a farmer for a few days, borrowed a bicycle and made his way back to home. He hid there in his own house until the liberation of the Netherlands on 5 May 1945.

What happened to the helpers? Johannes Kleiman (August 17 1896 - January 28

1959 in Amsterdam)

Kleiman was arrested and interrogated at the Gestapo Headquarters, then transferred the same day to a prison for Jews and 'political prisoners' awaiting deportation.

He was imprisoned in the Amersfoort labour camp before he was released by special dispensation of the Red Cross, due to ill-health. In all, he was a prisoner of the Nazis for about six weeks.

What happened to the helpers?

Jan Gies October 18, 1905 – January

26, 1993

Jan was involved in the underground Dutch resistance

Took charge of the business after the others were arrested

Miep Gies February15, 1909 –January 11,

2010

Miep was not arrested out of the sympathy of the officer.

Miep tried to bribe the officer to get information on the families

After the war, Miep and Jan had a son, Paul, who was born in 1950.

What happened to Mushi, Peter's cat?

According to Miep:

“After they were arrested, the cat was still there. It did not run away. But the cat did not feel at home anymore. It missed Peter. But one day the office cleaner asked if she could take the cat. She took Mushi and gave the cat a new home.”

We do not know what happened with Anne’s cat.

When the Nazis found Anne and her family were they sent directly to a "Death Camp?"

No. They spent 4 days locked in a holding cell in Amsterdam, and on August 8, 1944 they were transported to the Westerbork Camp.

They stayed there for the whole month of August in the "punishable barracks." They were considered "punishable prisoners" since they had not given themselves up when the call-up notices were sent, but had been captured in hiding.

Where did they go after Westerbork?

On September 3, 1944, the eight prisoners joined 1,011 others on the last train bound for the Auschwitz death

camp in Poland.

Hermann van Pels (Mr. Van Daan) is gassedon September 6, 1944, a few days after arrival.

Otto, Peter, and Mr. Dussel go to the men barracks. Anne, Margot, Mrs. Frank, and Mrs. Van Daan are sent to the women’s barracks. Mr. Frank never sees his wife or daughters again.

Anne and Margot are sent to Bergen-Belsen, in October 1944. Mrs. Van Daan arrives at Bergen-Belsen at the end of November.

Edith Frank dies of disease and/or malnutrition at Auschwitz on January 6, 1945

Otto Frank & Auschwitz is liberated on January 26, 1945 by the Russians.

Mr. Frank made it back and arrived at Miep’s doorstep on June 3rd, 1945.

Where was Bergen-Belsen?

Bergen-Belsen was a concentration camp located in northern Germany. Bergen-Belsen was established in April 1943 as a detention camp for prisoners who were to be exchanged with German imprisoned in Allied countries.

Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British Army on April 15, 1945.

What happened to Anne and Margot?

Anne and Margot both died of typhus and starvation during February-March 1945.

Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the British Army on April 15, 1945.

What happened to Mr. Dussel?He was deported to Neuengamme

concentration camp near Hamburg and died n 20 December 1944. His cause of death was listed in the camp records as "enterocolitis", a catch-all term that covered, among other things, dysentery and cholera, both of which were common causes of death in the camps. (Charlotte Kaletta married Fritz Pfeffer posthumously

on 9 April 1953. His son, Werner, survived the war in England and emigrated to the United States in 1947.)

What happened to Mrs. Van Daan?

Mrs. Van Daan, we think, was transferred before March 1945 to Buchenwald, then to the Theresienstadt ghetto. She is believed to have died either en route to Theresienstadt, or shortly after her arrival there.

What happened to Peter? He was transferred to and then

died in Mauthausen after a death march.

Mauthausen Concentration Camp records indicate that Peter van Pels was registered upon his arrival there on 25 January 1945. Four days later, he was placed in an outdoor labor group. On 11 April 1945, Peter was sent to the sick barracks. His exact death date is unknown but the Red Cross designated it as 2 May 1945. He was 18 years old.

Mauthausen was liberated three days later on 5 May 1945 by men from the 11th Armored Division of the U.S. Third Army.

What happened to Mr. Frank? Otto remarried in 1953 to a

neighbor Elfriede Geiringer-Markovits (Fritzi) and moved to Basel, Switzerland.

When he heard that the office building where he and his family hid for two years was scheduled to be torn down, he began the Anne Frank Foundation (1957) in order to acquire the space and turned the building into a museum in 1960. The Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel was set up in 1966 to protect his daughter’s name and deal with royalties from the diary which benefits several charities.

Otto Frank died on August 19th, 1980 after a battle with cancer, he was ninety-one years old.

What happened to Anne’s friends? Hannah, Gabi, and her father were taken

to Bergen-Belsen. While there, she was able to see Anne,

who was in the prisoner section of the camp. Hannah was able to talk to Anne several times through the barrier, and to toss some essentials over it for her. Shortly after Hannah threw the bundle over the fence for Anne, Anne's contingent of prisoners was moved, and Hannah never heard from her again.

Hannah and her little sister Gabi were the only members of their family to survive the war, and Hannah was near death from typhus and tuberculosis when the Russians liberated the train in which she and Gabi were being transported, reportedly to Theresienstadt.

After recovering, Hannah emigrated to Israel, became a nurse, and ultimately a grandmother of ten.

What happened to Anne’s friends? Helmuth "Hello" Silberberg Hello had been living in Amsterdam with his

grandparents, but by a very convoluted series of events, including several narrow escapes from the Nazis, he was able eventually to reunite with his parents in Belgium. Belgium was also an occupied country, however, and he and his family were still "in hiding", though not under circumstances as difficult as the Franks.

The town where the Silberbergs were hiding was liberated by American forces on 3 September 1944, and Hello was free — tragically on the same day that Anne and her family left on the last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz.

Hello emigrated to the United States after the war, and is today known as Ed Silverberg.He appears as Ed Silverberg in the multimedia stage presentation about the Holocaust called, And Then They Came for Me.

The only know video footage of Anne Frank

The Secret Annex

Was Anne's diary the only diary ever found from the Holocaust? No, there are many diaries and testimonies from the Holocaust.

Students may want to read more, such as We are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the

Holocaust, Jacob Boas (Scholastic, 1995) Witnesses to War, Eight True-Life stories of Nazi persecution,

Michael Leapman (Viking 1998) Edith's Story, Edith Velmans, (Bantam) 2000 Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust,

Alexandra Zapruder (Yale University Press) 2002.

"How will learning about her life change the way you live yours?"