Anne Frank and her family were also denied entry as refugees to the U.S.
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| Portrait of Anne Frank at age 12, sitting at her desk at the Montessori school in Amsterdam. (Courtesy Anne Frank House, Amsterdam) |
Many have noted the historical parallels
between the current debate over Syrians seeking refuge in the United
States and the plight of European Jews fleeing German-occupied
territories on the eve of World War II.
Among the many who tried —
and failed — to escape Nazi persecution: Otto Frank and his family,
which included wife, Edith, and his daughters, Margot and Anne. And
while the story of the family's desperate attempts ending in futility
may seem remarkable today, it's emblematic of what a number of other
Jews fleeing German-occupied territories experienced, American
University history professor Richard Breitman wrote in 2007 upon the discovery of documents chronicling the Franks' struggle to get U.S. visas.
"Otto
Frank’s efforts to get his family to the United States ran afoul of
restrictive American immigration policies designed to protect national
security and guard against an influx of foreigners during time of war,"
Breitman wrote. The historian told NPR in 2007 that the documents suggest "Anne Frank could be a 77-year-old woman living in Boston today – a writer." Instead, she died at the age of 15 at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
Otto Frank tried relatively late to obtain visas to the United States, a convoluted and ultimately doomed process laid bare in the nearly 80 pages of documents unearthed by
the the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Even Frank's high-level
connections within American business and political circles weren't
enough to secure safe passage for his family.
"The story seems to
unfold in slow motion as the painstaking exchange of letters journey
across continents and from state to state, their information often
outdated by the time they arrive," the New York Times wrote after
reviewing the YIVO documents. "Each page adds a layer of sorrow as the
tortuous process for gaining entry to the United States — involving
sponsors, large sums of money, affidavits and proof of how their entry
would benefit America — is laid out. The moment the Franks and their
American supporters overcame one administrative or logistical obstacle,
another arose."
Trying to get out
By
1941, the Frank family had already relocated from Germany to the
Netherlands where, just a few years earlier, Otto Frank applied for
visas to the United States — applications that were eventually
destroyed, Frank wrote in a letter to his old college friend in the
United States, Nathan Straus Jr.
"I am forced to look out for emigration and as far as I can see U.S.A. is the only country we could go to," Frank wrote on
April 30, 1941. "Perhaps you remember that we have two girls. It is for
the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our own fate
is of less importance."
Frank asked his friend to potentially put up $5,000 to cover a deposit for the visas. "You are the only person I know that I can ask," Frank writes.
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| A photograph of Otto Frank, with his daughters Anne, center, and Margot, is displayed alongside yellow stars worn by Dutch Jews at an exhibit of letters and documents in New York. (Mary Altaffer/AP) |
Straus was a connected man — the son of a Macy's co-owner, the head of the U.S. Housing Authority and, according to the Times,
a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt's. The YIVO documents show that Straus
and his wife, Helen, became involved in the saga, appealing to the State
Department and the Migration Department at the National Refugee
Service.
Edith Frank's brothers stepped in to help; they had
already come to the United States and were willing to supply affidavits
of support. Otto Frank was worried that his wife's brothers, "as
ordinary workmen around Boston," wouldn't have sufficient money to
convince American immigration officials that they could support the
Franks. Eventually, the brothers' employer submitted affidavits in
support of the family.
Otto Frank may have been successful had he tried to leave sooner, but, as New York University professor of Holocaust studies David Engel wrote,
"understanding the situation of Jews in the Netherlands under Nazi
occupation, like understanding any aspect of the Holocaust, requires
suspension of hindsight."
Prior to April 1941, Otto Frank's work
was going well; his family was comfortable and some of the most
restrictive moves made against Jews in the Netherlands hadn't yet been
enacted. "Hence he preferred what seemed to him like the nuisances that
encumbered an otherwise comfortable life under Nazi occupation in the
Netherlands to the insecurity of life as a double refugee in a new
country, even if a new country could be found," Engel wrote. It appears that a Nazi sympathizer's attempt to blackmail Otto Frank triggered his efforts anew to secure visas for his family.
Shifting rules and attitudes
But
as the Frank family filed paperwork, immigration rules were changing —
and attitudes in the United States toward immigrants from Europe were
becoming increasingly suspicious, Breitman wrote.
The American government was making it harder for foreigners to get into
the country — and the Nazis were making it difficult to leave.
By early 1939, more than 300,000 names were on the waiting list to receive an immigration visa to the United States, Breitman wrote.
American consulates changed their protocol and weren't granting visas
unless transportation to the United States had been booked. By June
1941, most U.S. consulates in German-occupied territories had shuttered
or were closing — meaning Otto Frank would have to have gone to Spain or
Portugal, legally, to apply at consulates there. In July 1941, a new
division within the U.S. State Department took over visa pre-screening,
meaning those in the United States would need to fill out new affidavits
on behalf of potential immigrants.
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| On June 17, 1939, German Jewish refugees return to Antwerp, Belgium, after they had been denied entrance to Cuba and the United States. (AP) |
Also,
new U.S. immigration regulations meant the Franks couldn't get visas if
they had any remaining close relatives in Germany, a restriction meant
to counter the belief at the time that German authorities would use
remaining relatives to pressure refugees into spying in the United
States. By this time, Breitman wrote, American anxieties over foreigners
from German-invaded countries had increased, particularly the belief in
a "Fifth Column" — disloyal elements in European territories that made
German takeover easier.
"It
is a fact that some of the Germans and Italians who left their
countries in recent years because of persecution by their governments
have, nevertheless, become in our country strong defendants of their
native governments and the practices of their present governments,"
American Ambassador to Cuba George S. Messersmith wrote in May 1940.
"Among the so-called refugees in our country is a fair number who can
be depended upon to act as agents of their government and who will
violate in any way the hospitality which they are enjoying among us."
The Frank family fate
Such
restrictions meant the "entire Frank family would have to get U.S.
visas simultaneously, or none could qualify," Breitman wrote. "By the
time Nathan Straus accumulated some of this information, Otto Frank had
already concluded that the prospect of getting into the U.S. directly
was dim. So he turned to Cuba as a possible refuge."
While
some European Jews managed to get into Cuba, where they awaited
American visas, the United States tightened its visa procedures — and by
July 1941, the American ambassador told Cuba that refugees on tourist
visas may not be eligible for American visas. That triggered Cuban
anxiety that European refugees could be stuck on the island nation, and
officials signaled the need to tighten Cuban immigration policies,
Breitman wrote.
Both Straus and one of Edith Frank's brothers had explored Cuba as an option for the family, the documents show.
“The
only way to get to a neutral country are visas of others States such as
Cuba … and many of my acquaintances got visas for Cuba," Frank wrote to
Straus on Sept. 8, 1941.
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| An undated photo of Anne Frank from the Anne Frank Center. (AP) |
Despite
the considerable hardships and expense — it usually cost about $2,500
per person to obtain a visa — Otto Frank managed to get a Cuban visa for
himself on Dec. 1, 1941. Ten days later, Germany and Italy declared war
on the United States, and Frank's visa was canceled.
The Frank family went into hiding in 1942, a day after Margot Frank received a Nazi order to go east to a labor camp and a month after Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday. They
were eventually discovered and sent to concentration camps, where Anne
Frank and her sister, Margot, died of typhus and their mother died of
starvation.
On Jan. 31, 1946, the YIVO documents show, the
National Refugee Service responded to an inquiry from Edith Frank's
brother as to the whereabouts of his family: Otto Frank was alive in
Amsterdam, five years after he began his desperate attempt to get his
family to the United States.
"It’s difficult in times like these:
ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed
by grim reality," Anne Frank wrote in 1944 in her diary,
which helped personalize the tragedies experienced by millions of Jews.
"It's a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd
and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite
of everything, that people are truly good at heart."
