The Diary of a Young Girl

Otto Frank was born August 19, 1880. He was the son of wealthy banker Michael Frank and his wife Alice. He served as a lieutenant in the German army during World War I. Otto’s family lost much of their wealth in the economic crash of the 1930s. Otto worked for Opekta, a company that processed and sold spices. This position allowed him to get a job managing a company office and warehouse in Amsterdam when the Nazis rose to power in Germany. By 1933, the entire family relocated there. During World War II, Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands in May 1941. By July 9, 1942, when his daughter Margot received a notice for deportation from the Nazi authorities, Otto hid his family in the rear upper rooms of the building he worked in with the help of loyal employees.

Anne felt closer to her father than her mother, although their relationship became more distant as Anne became a teenager. Anne describes Otto as a quiet, reserved man. She notes that “Pim [Anne’s nickname for him] never talks about himself” (129) and, during dinner, he “looks to see whether the others have been served first” (106). As she grew older, though, Anne struggled to relate to Otto. In March 1944 she writes of “the realization that I was never going to be able to confide in Father” (173).

After the arrest of the Secret Annex group, Otto was sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. He lived to see the camp liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945. He was the only one of the eight Annex residents to survive the Holocaust. After the war, he revised and published Anne’s diary out of respect for her wish to publish the diary after the war. He founded the Anne Frank Foundation in 1957, which maintains the Secret Annex building as a museum. Otto married another Auschwitz survivor named Elfriede Geiringer in 1953 and the couple moved to Birsfelden, Switzerland, where Otto died from lung cancer on August 19, 1980.

Born Edith Holländer on January 16, 1900, in Aachen, Germany, Edith was the wife of Otto Frank and the mother of Anne and Margot Frank. She was the daughter of a rich businessman named Abraham Holländer and his wife Rosa Stern. In 1925 she and Otto married. According to Anne, while Edith loved Otto, Otto only married her because he thought she would be a “suitable wife” (153).

Edith was close to her elder daughter Margot, but she had a difficult relationship with Anne. Of their relationship, Anne writes, “It’s obvious that I’m a stranger to her; she doesn’t even know what I think about the most ordinary things” (41). While in hiding, Anne does come to better understand her mother and even comes to admire her. Even then, Anne thinks Edith sees her and Margot “more as friends than as daughters” and is a person “who pokes fun” (133) at Anne when she cries.

After the Secret Annex was discovered, Edith was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was separated from Otto. She died from starvation by January 6, 1945.

The eldest daughter of Edith and Otto Frank, Margot was born on February 16, 1926. While Anne was close to Otto, Margot was close to Edith. Margot was a quiet, intelligent girl who hoped to become a nurse treating newborns in Palestine (233). At first, Anne did not get along with her sister or her mother. She writes, “When it comes to my feelings, Mother and Margot ceased to count long ago” (64). However, their relationship improved as Anne grew older, and they started exchanging letters.

When the eight Annex residents were arrested, the Franks were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anne and Margot were later transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Margot died of typhus in February 1945, apparently a few days before Anne’s death.

Peter was the only adolescent boy in the Secret Annex. He was born November 8, 1926. Anne writes that Peter “is usually quiet and hardly makes his presence known” (105). When she befriends him, she sees him as “having a huge inferiority complex” (159). As time passes, Anne befriends and becomes intimate with Peter. She notes that before him, “never had someone [she] could confide in” (224). While she sees Peter as “peace-loving, tolerant and extremely easygoing” (256), she thinks he “still has too little character, too little willpower, too little courage and strength” (225), and does not see him as a potential future husband. After the Annex residents were arrested, Peter was sent to Auschwitz. He was put on the death march from Auschwitz to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where he died in May 1945.

Auguste van Pels (Mrs. van Daan in the diary) was the mother of Peter and the wife of Hermann. Anne disliked her at first, remarking on Mrs. van Daan’s “many bad traits” (100). Elsewhere, however, she also describes her as “extraordinarily hardworking and neat” and “quite cheerful” (69). Anne later determined that her earlier dislike of the van Daans stemmed from her family’s “biased point of view” (142). Auguste was killed in German custody in April 1945.

Hermann van Pels (called Mr. van Daan in the diary) was the husband of Auguste and the father of Peter. His family joined the Secret Annex because he was a former business associate of Otto Frank. He was killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz sometime in the fall of 1944.

Albert Dussel, whose real name was Fritz Pfeffer, was the last person to join the Secret Annex. Anne disliked him, and he apparently did not get along with the rest of the residents, who, in Anne’s account, treated him like a “leper” (115). He died on December 20, 1944, in the Neueugamme concentration camp in Germany.

Hermine Gies (called Miep in Anne’s diary) was one of Otto Frank’s employees for Opetka. She and her husband Jan helped the Franks when they were in hiding, giving them news from the outside world and helping them with supplies and food. After the war, it was Miep who saved Anne’s diary, which had been scattered around the Secret Annex after Nazi officers rummaged through the rooms. She lived in Amsterdam until her death on January 11, 2010.

Anne identifies Elisabeth by the nickname Bep. One of Otto Frank’s employees, she and her father Johannes helped the Franks while they were in hiding. She continued living in Amsterdam after the war, dying on May 6, 1983.

Bep’s father and an employee of Otto Frank, Mr. Voskuijl was another helper of the Secret Annex residents. Identified as Mr. Voskuijl throughout Anne’s diary, he built the bookcase that hid the entrance to the Annex. He was diagnosed with cancer during the war and died on November 27, 1945.

Mr. Kugler was among the employees of Otto Frank who helped the Annex residents. For his involvement, he was arrested by the Gestapo on August 4, 1944. He was eventually sent to a German labor camp but managed to escape during a bombing. He later emigrated to Canada and died in Toronto on December 14, 1989.