#otto frank

[girlactionfigure]

In this photo is Audrey Hepburn with Otto Frank, Anne’s father. Audrey Hepburn was born on May 4, 1929. The actress is best known for such films as Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but did you know that she turned down playing the role of Anne Frank? Here’s why.

What many may not know about Hepburn is that as a teenager she helped the Dutch resistance in WWII. Both Hepburn and Frank were born in 1929. The two never met but Hepburn felt close to the young diarist, and lived 60 miles apart from each other. While Hepburn was not Jewish, she spent several years of the war in a cellar to use as a bomb shelter and even faced near starvation. During this time she managed to arrange illegal dance performances to support local families who were hiding Jews.

After the war, Otto reached out to Hepburn asking if she would play the role of his daughter for the movie adaptation of the well-known diary. Hepburn felt unable to play the part, having had such a traumatic experience during the war, it would be too difficult. She said of Frank: “It’s a little bit as if this had happened to my sister . . . in a way she was my soul sister.”

Photo: Luca Dotti

Humans of Judaism

[fran-ryougi]

January 27th, 2024 - Holocaust Memorial

I had problems to return to read about holocaust and Anne, after what is happened here on tumblr. But today, like every year, I must do something for make others remember.

I will share an old article that I wrote about Rywka Lipszyc, another Jewish girl who wrote a diary.

The article is in Italian but you can use Google translate or another translator.

[direwolfrules]

Y’all, go watch A Small Light. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and I’m crying as I type this out.

A Small Light is the story of Miep Gies, Otto Frank’s secretary who helped hide the residents of the Secret Annex, and her husband Jan, who was a member of the Dutch resistance. There’s suspense, and drama, and moments of joy, all ultimately leading to the heartbreak you know is coming.

It’s eight episodes people, I know colleges are going on break right now so y’all have time.

I just…this show deserves all the awards. Emmy sweep, thy name is A Small Light. The usage of light and color, music, I just…God.

The acting is phenomenal. Liev Schrieber’s portrayal of Otto Frank throughout the series, especially after the homecoming, it was amazing. I was bawling. Bawling.

This show hurt to watch. And that’s good, because it should. These were real people, and we should weep for them, we should remember them.

[wendyliddel]

Watching A Small Light really brings back feelings from the first time I read Anne’s diary.

Like, I think I knew that Anne was killed, but I don’t think I knew the fates of the other residents of the annex.

Reading the epilogue and finding out that all of the residents except for Otto were killed was definitely a gut punch.

I have read the diary multiple times since then, and I have also read Meip’s biography, but watching this show still hit hard.

[todaysjewishholiday]

25 Menachem Av 5784 (28-29 August 2024)

Due to Anne Frank’s diary, the Frank family and their associates are among the best known victims of the Nazi regime. But the focus is almost always on the two years of their life that were spent in hiding in the upper chambers of Otto Frank’s workplace. That closed off existence was an anomaly that has little to do with the broader European Jewish experience of the Shoah. Examining the trajectory of the Frank’s life before and after their time in the Annex reveals more about how vulnerable even the most wealthy European Jews were in the face of Nazi targeting and the widespread antisemitism and apathy of other nations that could have provided refuge.

Otto and Edith Frank were prosperous German Jews from culturally integrated but still religiously practicing families in the Liberal (aka Reform) Movement. Otto had served in the German Imperial Army in the so-called “War to End All Wars” and then served as a bank manager and businessman. Edith was the heiress to a moderate industrial fortune. They were members of a well-established German Jewish middle class that was the envy of Jews across all the rest of Europe.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Otto Frank immediately recognized the danger, and moved his family to the Netherlands. Through family connections, he was able to open a Dutch branch of Opekta, a company that specialized in pectin and spices for canning.

The Franks were far from the only German emigres in Amsterdam’s Jewish community during those years. So many had seen the danger, but thought that across one border would be secure enough.

As the years passed, the Franks continued to hear from relatives in Germany as the situation became more and more dire. As it became clear that the Nazis wouldn’t be contained by Germany’s border, Otto began applying for visas elsewhere. The Franks were financially self-supporting, well educated, and in good health. The only thing standing in their way as potential immigrants was their Jewishness. Several years of applications proved fruitless.

The Nazis invaded the Netherlands and occupied the nation. Otto was forced to sell his businesses, the girls were kicked out of school. Rumors of the concentration camps spread. Otto continued to seek some route of escape. None was available. His former employees were eager to find some way to help— they saw the injustice of the situation keenly and were close personal friends of the Franks. But there were obvious and massive dangers to attempting to remain hidden in the Netherlands under Nazi rule. Otto continued to grasp for an alternative until the day the family received a summons to send their elder daughter, Margot, for forced labor in Germany. It is then that they sprung the plan Otto had come up with along with a small circle of Opekta employees to hide the family in the upper floors of the company’s offices. Everybody involved knew that to participate was too risk murder at the hands of the Nazi occupiers and betrayal by Dutch collaborators. But they had no other available options. The Franks had to travel on foot for several miles across the city— Jews had already been banned from traveling on Dutch public transportation by the Nazis. They left their apartment in disarray with notes suggesting a last minute dash for the Swiss border in the hopes of throwing the authorities off their scent.

Just over two years after their disappearance behind the walls of Otto’s office, the Franks found their refuge breached by the SS on the 25th of Av 5704 and they were placed first in a Nazi jail and then transported to Auschwitz. There they experienced every horror of life in the camps. Edith, Margot, and Anne all died within the next year, and Otto was the family’s sole survivor.

[foreverinthepagesofhistory]

“..but how could I choose just one…” 💔

People:

~ Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia ~

~ Princess Alix of Hesse and By Rhine ~

~ Princess Margaret of the UK ~

~ Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse ~

~ Princess Charlotte of Prussia ~

~ Anne Frank ~

~ Prince Leopold Duke of Albany ~

~ Grand Duke Ernst Louis of Hesse and By Rhine ~

~ Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha ~

~ Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland ~

~ Vera Konstantinovna ~

~ Otto Frank ~

~ Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich ~

~ Prince Joachim of Prussia ~

~ “Joanna the Mad” ~

~ Kaiser Wilhelm II ~

~ Marie Therese, Madame Royale and Dauphin Louis Charles ~

Made by me using iMovie

[wanderingmadscientist]

In honor of today being the day the End of Evangelion was released, I am sharing a source sheet I made for a dvar torah about evangelion.

[vanessafangirl13]

Happy birthday to Anne Frank 🎉🎊 a symbol of hope and human rights of the 20th century

And the writer of her diary explaining her life during the most tragic moment

Though her life was cut short at 15 years old during the Holocaust, she's still remembered as one of the most celebrated writers of all time, published after the war by her father Otto Frank, Her story would continue for many generations to come

[yoursannefrank]

Otto Frank inaugurating the Statue of Anne Frank, Amsterdam 1977

SOURCE

[a-contemplative-soul]

This is a really unique and valuable interview, Anne Frank's diary is one of the most unforgettable stories ever written and having her father saying how much impact it left around the world after it was published is just a proof of how moving it was.

Channel: BBC Archive

Video: 1976 OTTO FRANK on the Diary of Anne Frank | Blue Peter | Children's Television | BBC Archive

Year: 1976

[dragoneyes618]

"One of the first Americans to discover Anne Frank's diary was Meyer Levin, an American-Jewish novelist, who helped arrange for its English publication. Levin also procured from Otto Frank the right to adapt the diary as a play. Although the script Levin produced was extremely faithful to Anne Frank's original diaries, Lillian Hellman, one of the foremost playwrights of the period, told Otto Frank that Levin's script was unactable. Hellman, a pro-Stalinist, used her considerable influence to have The Diary of Anne Frank assigned to friends, with whom she worked on the script. It was this version, and not Levin's, that was subsequently produced. In the final edition of the new script, Anne Frank's statement that Judaism and its ideals were the root cause of Nazi antisemitism was eliminated. Instead, words were put into the actress's mouth that Anne had never written but which reflected the worldview of the play's writers: "We are not the only people that have had to suffer...sometimes one race, sometimes another." 

- Jewish Literacy, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, page 408

[girlactionfigure]

[theredandwhitequeen]

Book 26 of the 50 book challenge. The Last Secret of the Secret Annex by Joop Van Wijk- Voskuijl and Jeroen De Bruyn. The authors were mainly writing about Bep Voskuijl who was one of the helpers for the Secret Annex but they also talked about the other helpers, plus Anne, Margot, Edith and Otto Frank and some about the other family and the dentist who were hidden in the building. It’s a very good book and one of Bep’s sisters was involved with Nazis during the war and may have been the one who turned them in, but nobody knows for certain who are still alive. It’s a really good book. Joop is the youngest son of Bep born in 1949. If you’re interested at all in the Frank family or read Anne’s diary, you may like this book.

[sparklytimemachineflower]

So my assignment was to write two 20 page pamphlets and create a cover for them. This one's for Anne Frank, how'd I do?

Also if anyone has a cool name idea, I'm all ears.

[andrewisdoing]

Late Night Thoughts on 8/6/2023

It’s wild to think that when I am reading about so many lives lived non-fiction or otherwise, I feel like there is so much life I haven’t lived yet, even at 29. This isn’t to say that I haven’t lived or been anywhere emotionally or physically but there are times when I feel like these people had direction in their lives. Some people lived for resistance, some for survival or both. What am I living for?

I know how this sounds. I should feel so lucky that I haven’t lived during WWII or had to make the sacrifices and risks that Otto Frank or Miep Gies had to make. I should be feeling so lucky that I didn’t have to live in hiding and have no choice but to free my mind with only my words and diary as my weaponry, like Anne.

Sometimes I just wonder what am I sacrificing in my own life? Am I living for others? Granted, I have sacrificed certain parts of myself when I raised my sisters with our mother gone, but I lived (still fighting) through that personal war with the help of family, strangers and friends. I sometimes wonder what it would take to live with that spirit alone and in the face of certain death and suffering.

Even as I read of the treatment of gay men in the Holocaust, I can’t fathom living in a world where the same flourishing atmosphere you live in crumbles and disappears into camps that individually serve you certain death on a platter. No matter how many times I read and see these past atrocities, I constantly feel so confused and baffled at the hatred that resulted in the deaths of so many human beings. The accounts are so hard to digest but here I am, drawn in and constantly in revery, disgust and awe of these stories every time.

I don’t want to forget these “dark” things that have happened and ARE happening to our humanity on earth. I don’t. I so desperately want to understand why we allow suffering and pain to be inflicted on those who are different. I truly want to fathom what drives hate into a person and makes them look at someone like me and want to kill me. It’s important to me.

It’s more than being “good” or “woke.” It’s about being the home that people need. It’s about being that ear and protection for someone who is ostracized. I just want to be the “someone” that is an emotional shelter for others.

[dirjoh-blog]

My letter to Otto Frank

Dear Mr. Otto Frank, I write this letter with the humility and deep respect that one father extends to another, though no words can ever truly capture the weight of what you have endured. As a father of three children myself, I can only begin to imagine the depth of love, worry, and hope you must have carried through those years, even as the world around you fell apart. You faced unthinkable…