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May 6, 2024

Dear Friends,

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

For more than two years, the Frank family of four (Otto, Edith, Anne, and Margot), Van Pels family of three (Hermann, Auguste, and Peter), and Fritz Pfeffer, the Jewish residents of the Secret Annex, were kept alive in Amsterdam by a team of helpers, including Miep and Jan Gies, Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, and Bep Voskuijl.

But in August of 1944, the eight people hiding in the Secret Annex were discovered, arrested, and transferred to Westerbork transit camp. In September 1944, they were all deported to Auschwitz, the most infamous death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, on the last train to depart from Westerbork.

While different destinations awaited the eight, Otto Frank alone survived until liberation.

Otto Frank, when he chose Amsterdam as a safe haven for his German Jewish family, could not have known that the Netherlands would be the deadliest place in Western Europe for Jews. Nearly 75% of Jews in the Netherlands were killed during the Holocaust.

The full name of Yom HaShoah is “Yom Hashoah v-HaGevurah,” a day devoted to the victims and heroes of the Holocaust.

Earlier today I lit a candle in memory of Edith, Margot, and Anne Frank, and the millions of other victims whose names and faces we will never know.

I also lit the candle in honor of the team of rescuers in Amsterdam who risked their lives to keep the eight residents of the Secret Annex alive for more than two years.

May all of their memories be a blessing.

With antisemitism and bigotry rising globally, along with challenges to fact-based education, our work is more urgent than ever. Anne Frank Center USA will continue to use the current environment as motivation to expand our reach, grow our impact, and inspire individuals to make positive change in the world.

Sincerely,

Dr. Lauren Bairnsfather
CEO
Anne Frank Center USA


The Anne Frank Center USA inspires emerging adults through arts-based educational programs in order to build the informed and compassionate world Anne imagined in the pages of her diary.

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