Frank's Pleas for Help Released

Time Magazine reported last week that desperate pleas for help from Anne Frank's father have been released. Otto Frank sent notes of despair seeking financial aid for his family to flee the Netherlands, occupied by Nazis in 1941. The letters, sent from April 30th through December 11th, 1941 as Germany declared war on America, were released by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Initially, the letters were in the custody of New York City's Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Eventually they were transferred to the YIVO Institute, along with other archives, in 1974. Based in New York, YIVO is an institution that focuses on the history and culture of Eastern European Jews. About a year and a half ago, a volunteer archivist uncovered the letters among 100,000 other Holocaust-related documents, but they were not public. Cathy Callegari, a spokeswoman for YIVO, said that the institute did not announce the findings in order to investigate copyright issues and other legalities. The origin of Frank's letters may never be known since they were mixed in with documents from various agencies in the HIAS archives.

Included with the letters were documents and records from agencies that helped European immigrants escape. Frank attempted to have wife Edith, daughters Margo and Anne, and mother-in-law Rosa Hollander flee to safety to the United States or Cuba, but failed due to restrictive laws. According to Holocaust experts, Otto attempted to gain U.S. visas for his family before going into hiding, but he was hindered by tight immigration policies that were designed to protect national security. He first filed in 1938, but revived his efforts in 1941. He joined nearly 300,000 names on a waiting list for an immigration visa. Frank may have been denied the application because he had living relatives in Germany, which under strict immigration policies wouldn't allow him and his family to emigrate.

In a letter to college friend, Nathan Straus, Otto stresses the danger his family faces. "I would not ask if conditions here would not force me to do all I can in time to be able to avoid worse. It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our own fate is of less importance."

After Otto's unsuccessful attempts, the family took refuge in July 1942. For over two years, the Frank family hid before being discovered and arrested. Anne Frank documented life in her diary, before dying of typhus in a concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, Germany at the age of 15. Otto Frank returned to the Netherlands to collect his daughter's notes, and first published them in 1947. "The Diary of Anne Frank" has since sold 75 million copies. Their hiding place, a secret annex in an Amsterdam warehouse, has been turned into a museum.

Teresien da Silva, a spokeswoman for the Anne Frank Foundation is hopeful that they will be able to obtain the letters. "We'd like to have every original paper related to the Frank family. But we don't know what the outcome will be," Silva said.