Otto Frank

German-Swiss businessman (d. 1980)

On the morning of 4 August 1944, following a tip from an informer who has never been identified, the Achterhuis was stormed by a group of German uniformed police (Grüne Polizei) led by SS-Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer of the Sicherheitsdienst. The Franks, van Pelses, and Pfeffer were taken to RSHA headquarters, where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5 August they were transferred to the Huis van Bewaring (House of Detention), an overcrowded prison on the Weteringschans. Two days later they were transported to the Westerbork transit camp, through which by that time more than 100,000 Jews, mostly Dutch and German, had passed. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and sent to the Punishment Barracks for hard labor. In her book describing the betrayal and transportation to Auschwitz of her own family, Eva Schloss, whose mother Elfriede "Mutti" Geiringer married Otto Frank after the war, tells of the trial of Nazi collaborator Miep Braams: “Braams was the girlfriend of a Dutch resistance worker called Jannes Haan, and she was supposed to be helping him protect Jews and help the Resistance. As the war progressed, Haan became suspicious that his girlfriend was really a double agent for the Nazis: an awful lot of the Jewish families he entrusted to her were vanishing without trace, or being rounded up. When she became aware of his suspicions, Braams betrayed Haan to the Gestapo, and he was executed. It was later estimated that Miep Braams was responsible for betraying as many as two hundred Jewish families, including ours.” In April 1949, Braams received a sentence of six years. Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested and jailed at the penal camp for enemies of the regime at Amersfoort. Kleiman was released after seven weeks, but Kugler was held in various work camps until the war's end. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were questioned and threatened by the Security Police but not detained. They returned to the Achterhuis the following day, and found Anne's papers strewn on the floor. They collected them, as well as several family photograph albums, and Gies resolved to return them to Anne after the war. On 7 August 1944, Gies attempted to facilitate the release of the prisoners by confronting Silberbauer and offering him money to intervene, but he refused.

father of Anne Frank (b. 1889)