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Authors: Francine Prose
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were hidden. But in 1964, the last of the inquiries into Van Maaren’s wartime behavior was terminated for lack of “concrete results.” Other suspects have included the wife of one of Van Maaren’s assistants, a man named Lammert Hartog, who told his wife that he had seen large quantities of food delivered to the warehouse, and a Dutch Nazi said to have blackmailed Otto Frank for expressing anti-Nazi sentiments.
Though he himself suggested that Van Maaren was the likeliest culprit, Otto chose not to focus his energies on bringing his family’s betrayer to justice. By nature, and as a consequence of his tragic experience, he favored reconciliation overretribution, mercy over justice. What did it matter who made the telephone call that the arresting officer reported receiving? How would it have helped Otto Frank, or his wife and children, or their Dutch helpers, to know who had sold eight lives in exchange for the bounty that the Nazis paid for the fugitive Jews?
A FTER the arrest, the prisoners were taken to the Gestapo headquarters on Euterpestraat, then to the prison, the Huis van Bewaring, on Weteringschans, where they spent three nights. Otto Frank was interrogated concerning the whereabouts of other hidden Jews, but he insisted that, after twenty-five months in the annex, he had no contact with anyone who might be in a situation like his—a claim so clearly logical that even the police were persuaded.
On August 8, the eight Jews from the annex were sent by train to Westerbork. For much of the journey, Anne stared out the window at the summer day and at the world she had left behind two years and one month before. On their arrival at Westerbork, they were classified as “criminal Jews”—Jews who had gone into hiding or had otherwise refused to be “voluntarily” deported. They were issued special uniforms (blue overalls, a red bib, ill-fitting wooden shoes) and sent to the punishment barracks.
Westerbork’s parody of normal life included well-equipped hospitals staffed by excellent doctors who treated prisoners so that they could be sent off to their deaths. There were entertainers, a cabaret, a symphony orchestra, soccer games—all under the guard towers and in the sights of the SS machine guns. A musical revue was performed on Tuesday evenings; earlier on Tuesdays, the weekly transports left Westerbork for Auschwitz.
In the journal she kept throughout the occupation and continued to write in at Westerbork, Elly Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman a decade or so older than Anne, describes babies dragged from their cots and pregnant women forced onto the transport. One young boy tried to run away when he realized he was going to Poland. As a deterrent to keeping other children from panicking at the last moment, fifty additional prisoners were added to those who had been scheduled to go with him. “Will the boy be able to live with himself, once it dawns on him exactly what he’s been the cause of?” wrote Hillesum. “And how will all the other Jews on board the train react to him? That boy is going to have a very hard time.”
In Willy Lindwer’s documentary, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, and in the book made from the film, the women who met the Franks at Westerbork recalled seeing the family together. Otto asked Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder, who was assigned to scrub toilets and distribute overalls and clogs to new arrivals, if Anne could work with her, but that proved impossible to arrange. Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, a Jewish woman who had worked with the Dutch Resistance and who later served as a nurse at Bergen-Belsen, recalled that the Frank girls were among the women who worked scouring the insides of batteries:
That was very messy work, and no one could understand the reason for it. We had to chop open the batteries with a chisel and a hammer and then throw the tar in one basket and the carbon bars, which we had to remove, into another basket; we had to take off the
Though he himself suggested that Van Maaren was the likeliest culprit, Otto chose not to focus his energies on bringing his family’s betrayer to justice. By nature, and as a consequence of his tragic experience, he favored reconciliation overretribution, mercy over justice. What did it matter who made the telephone call that the arresting officer reported receiving? How would it have helped Otto Frank, or his wife and children, or their Dutch helpers, to know who had sold eight lives in exchange for the bounty that the Nazis paid for the fugitive Jews?
A FTER the arrest, the prisoners were taken to the Gestapo headquarters on Euterpestraat, then to the prison, the Huis van Bewaring, on Weteringschans, where they spent three nights. Otto Frank was interrogated concerning the whereabouts of other hidden Jews, but he insisted that, after twenty-five months in the annex, he had no contact with anyone who might be in a situation like his—a claim so clearly logical that even the police were persuaded.
On August 8, the eight Jews from the annex were sent by train to Westerbork. For much of the journey, Anne stared out the window at the summer day and at the world she had left behind two years and one month before. On their arrival at Westerbork, they were classified as “criminal Jews”—Jews who had gone into hiding or had otherwise refused to be “voluntarily” deported. They were issued special uniforms (blue overalls, a red bib, ill-fitting wooden shoes) and sent to the punishment barracks.
Westerbork’s parody of normal life included well-equipped hospitals staffed by excellent doctors who treated prisoners so that they could be sent off to their deaths. There were entertainers, a cabaret, a symphony orchestra, soccer games—all under the guard towers and in the sights of the SS machine guns. A musical revue was performed on Tuesday evenings; earlier on Tuesdays, the weekly transports left Westerbork for Auschwitz.
In the journal she kept throughout the occupation and continued to write in at Westerbork, Elly Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman a decade or so older than Anne, describes babies dragged from their cots and pregnant women forced onto the transport. One young boy tried to run away when he realized he was going to Poland. As a deterrent to keeping other children from panicking at the last moment, fifty additional prisoners were added to those who had been scheduled to go with him. “Will the boy be able to live with himself, once it dawns on him exactly what he’s been the cause of?” wrote Hillesum. “And how will all the other Jews on board the train react to him? That boy is going to have a very hard time.”
In Willy Lindwer’s documentary, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, and in the book made from the film, the women who met the Franks at Westerbork recalled seeing the family together. Otto asked Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder, who was assigned to scrub toilets and distribute overalls and clogs to new arrivals, if Anne could work with her, but that proved impossible to arrange. Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, a Jewish woman who had worked with the Dutch Resistance and who later served as a nurse at Bergen-Belsen, recalled that the Frank girls were among the women who worked scouring the insides of batteries:
That was very messy work, and no one could understand the reason for it. We had to chop open the batteries with a chisel and a hammer and then throw the tar in one basket and the carbon bars, which we had to remove, into another basket; we had to take off the
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