“One day in Auschwitz I became so dispirited that I couldn’t carry on. They had given me a beating, which wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience. It was on a Sunday, and I said: ‘I can’t get up’. Then my comrades said: ‘That’s impossible, you have to get up, otherwise you’re lost’. They went to a Dutch doctor, who worked with the German doctor. He came to me in the barracks and said: ‘Get up and come to the hospital barracks early tomorrow morning. I’ll talk to the German doctor and make sure you are admitted’. Because of that I survived.”
– Otto Frank, Anne’s father, and the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. In this photograph he stands at the former hiding place for his family on Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam, on the day it opened as a museum in 1960.
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Notes:
Click here to read a snapshot biography of Jan and Miep Gies, who hid Otto and his family.
Sources:
“Passport photo Otto Frank, May 1936.” Photo collection Anne Frank House, Amsterdam. Public Domain Work, https://www.flickr.com/photos/collection_annefrankhouse/31955982371
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