Otto Frank returns to the Secret Annex
W–063
In the summer of 1945, Miep Gies handed Otto Frank his daughter’s papers. She had gathered them after the arrest of the people hiding behind the offices on Prinsengracht and kept them for Anne’s return. By then Otto knew that both his daughters had died. The diary remained with him.
Twelve years earlier, the family had begun again in Amsterdam. After the Nazis came to power, Otto left Frankfurt; Edith and their daughters, Margot and Anne, followed him to the Netherlands. His business sold pectin for making jam, and he later began trading in spices. In May 1940, German forces occupied the Netherlands. Efforts to find a route to the United States failed to get the family out.
On 5 July 1942, Margot received a summons to report for work in Germany. The next day the Franks went into the hiding place prepared behind Otto’s business premises. Hermann and Auguste van Pels and their son Peter joined them, followed by Fritz Pfeffer. Eight people relied on employees who brought food and news. In August, Johan Voskuijl built a hinged bookcase to conceal the entrance to their rooms.
On the morning of 4 August 1944, police entered the building. All eight were arrested and deported to Auschwitz through the Westerbork transit camp. Accounts of betrayal also appear in captions attached to this photograph. The Anne Frank House, however, states that there is no conclusive evidence that a tip-off led the police to the hiding place. The circumstances of the raid remain under investigation.
The family was separated at Auschwitz. Edith died there in January 1945. Margot and Anne were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where they died of typhus that winter. Otto, who remained in the camp’s sick barracks, survived the liberation of Auschwitz on 27 January. He was the only survivor of the eight people in hiding. He returned to Amsterdam on 3 June. He already knew that Edith had died; in July the Brilleslijper sisters, who had been with his daughters at Bergen-Belsen, told him of their deaths.
Anne had been preparing the diary for publication herself. After hearing a radio appeal to preserve accounts of the war, she began rewriting her entries as a book. Otto read the surviving notebooks and loose sheets and typed passages to share with relatives and friends. In April 1946, the historian Jan Romein wrote about the manuscript in Het Parool. The publisher Contact took an interest, and Het Achterhuis - The Secret Annex - appeared in 1947. Otto assembled its text from Anne’s original entries and her revised version. Translations followed.
The building where the family had hidden faced demolition in the 1950s. It was saved, and the Anne Frank House opened on 3 May 1960. At Otto’s request, the hiding rooms remained unfurnished: their contents had been removed after the arrests. The bookcase survived. The main photograph shows Otto demonstrating the entrance during a CBS assignment in July 1964. The agency record distinguishes it from Arnold Newman’s well-known portrait of Otto in the attic, taken in 1960.
Otto settled in Switzerland in 1952 and married Fritzi Geiringer, another Auschwitz survivor, the following year. He answered readers of the diary and took part in meetings with young people. Otto Frank died on 19 August 1980, aged 91. He bequeathed Anne’s original diaries to the Dutch state.
Photographs and documents
1. At the hidden entrance
Sources and provenance for frame 1
Catalogue 185573005: CBS assignment for The Twentieth Century, “Who Killed Anne Frank?”. The individual photographer is not named. This matches the submitted frame; its reposted 1960 date is incorrect.
Public Getty comp with its watermark preserved. The catalogue specifies editorial use; no purchased licence is documented.
File: 972 × 1024 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
CBS / Getty Images, 185573005File on WITNESS · 972 × 10242. Otto and Edith’s wedding
Sources and provenance for frame 2
The museum dates the marriage to 8 May and the celebration to four days later. Photographer unidentified.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 2762 × 1950 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank House: Otto FrankFile on WITNESS · 2762 × 19503. Otto with his daughters
Sources and provenance for frame 3
Anne Frank House photo collection, published by Anne Frank Zentrum. The caption does not name the photographer or exact location.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 829 × 1200 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank Zentrum: Who is Anne?File on WITNESS · 829 × 12004. The family in Amsterdam
Sources and provenance for frame 4
Names from left to right and date follow the museum caption. Photographer unidentified.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 689 × 1024 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank Zentrum: Who is Anne?File on WITNESS · 689 × 10245. A document for the journey home
Sources and provenance for frame 5
Carte de rapatrié from the museum collection. This is a document, not a photograph of his return. Reproduction photographer not credited.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 1054 × 700 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank House: Otto FrankFile on WITNESS · 1054 × 7006. With the helpers
Sources and provenance for frame 6
Names from left to right and month follow Anne Frank Zentrum. Exact location and photographer are not specified.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 1024 × 665 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank Zentrum: Who is Anne?File on WITNESS · 1024 × 6657. Testimony about his daughters’ deaths
Sources and provenance for frame 7
The document is signed C. R. Rebling-Brilleslijper. She gives late February to early March 1945; the sisters’ exact dates of death are unknown.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 2445 × 3455 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank House: Otto receives the diariesFile on WITNESS · 2445 × 34558. The diary’s first edition
Sources and provenance for frame 8
Reproduction of the book from the museum collection. Photographer of the cover not credited.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 812 × 1166 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank House: publication of the diaryFile on WITNESS · 812 × 11669. Before the museum opened
Sources and provenance for frame 9
Photograph by Ben van Meerendonk. Museum credit: AHF, IISG, Amsterdam.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 1890 × 1968 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank House: museum openingFile on WITNESS · 1890 × 196810. Portrait in the attic
Sources and provenance for frame 10
The museum biography gives the morning of 4 May; its timeline gives 3 or 4 May. Only the month is stated here. The Jewish Museum catalogue confirms the photographer and year.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 1839 × 2312 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank House: Otto FrankFile on WITNESS · 1839 × 231211. Demonstrating the bookcase
Sources and provenance for frame 11
Catalogue 185573007, from the same CBS assignment. The other man’s identity and the exact sequence of these frames have not been established.
Public Getty comp with its watermark preserved. The catalogue specifies editorial use; no purchased licence is documented.
File: 1024 × 1019 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
CBS / Getty Images, 185573007File on WITNESS · 1024 × 101912. His eighty-sixth birthday
Sources and provenance for frame 12
Historical colour photograph by Oscar Morawetz; date, place and photographer follow the Anne Frank House. This is not a modern colourisation.
Rights remain with the credited creators and collections; the page states no open reuse licence.
File: 2352 × 3000 px. Original bytes preserved; separate uncropped WebP preview. Source file.
Anne Frank House: Otto Franks TodFile on WITNESS · 2352 × 3000