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About a year before Anne Frank began her diary in June 1942, her father started a writing project of his own. Though most of the world now is familiar with Anne's private musings while her family was in hiding from Nazis, Wednesday's release of the Otto Frank file - whose discovery was first reported by TIME.com in January - by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City reveals yet another side of that family's life and what those who tried to survive the Holocaust were facing...
...documents - typed letters, handwritten notes and a telegram, many browning with age - show Otto Frank's determined effort, enlisting family and friends, to contact officials to extract his wife, mother-in-law and daughters from Nazi-occupied Holland. For nine months, they tried to secure visas - first to the U.S. and then to Cuba - until that window shut. Just three letters of the file were written by Otto Frank, all addressed to university friend Nathan Straus Jr., son of a co-owner of Macy's department store and head of the U.S. Housing Authority. Straus and Frank's brother...
...Engel wonders why Frank sprang into action in April 1941. After all, the Nazis had occupied the Netherlands since May 1940. Did the situation suddenly turn more desperate for Jews there, or did Otto Frank sense personal danger? Engel suspects the latter, referring to a theory first raised in Carol Ann Lee's 2003 book, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, which reported that a member of a Dutch pro-Nazi party was blackmailing Frank. After Otto was heard making a remark showing skepticism of prompt German victory, on April 18 the blackmailer requested a payoff. Twelve days later Frank...
...Otto Frank file measures at least half an inch thick, and page by page tells how the Franks tried desperately to escape from Nazi-occupied Holland. By the time Otto wrote his letters, the U.S. consulate in the Netherlands had closed, so he made attempts to arrange passage for his family to the United States or Cuba. He also explored possible escape routes through Spain that would ultimately lead to exit via neutral Portugal and sought visas to Paris...
...Perhaps the most interesting question raised by the letters' release is why Otto Frank's letters and pleas were not answered in a way that he could save his family. YIVO executive director Carl Rheins believes the Frank file raises profound questions about U.S. immigration policy. Meanwhile, YIVO has enlisted "giants" of Holocaust studies to put the letters in context: American University professor Richard Breitman and David Engel, New York University's Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust studies...