Next we went to Amsterdam to meet Anne Frank’s father. Otto Frank was a tall, dignified man in his late 60s who welcomed us warmly to his modest office. He was an officer in the German army during World War I but left Germany with his family after Hitler came to power. He and his wife raised their two daughters, Anne and Margot, in Amsterdam, where he managed a small but thriving spice factory. In July 1942, as persecution of Jews in the Netherlands intensified, Otto Frank decided to take his family into hiding in the top-floor attic of the spice factory, a setting that Anne referred to as the Secret Annexe.

The Franks lived there with another family until they were discovered by the Gestapo in 1944 and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister died of typhus at Bergen Belsen in March 1945, a few weeks before British troops liberated the camp. Otto Frank and his wife, Edith, were sent to Auschwitz, where he came close to death but survived. Edith died at Auschwitz.

We spoke for a few minutes before Mr Frank pulled open a filing-cabinet drawer and removed an object carefully wrapped in cloth. After placing it on the table, he unfolded the cloth and there before us was a small book with a red-and-white plaid cover. This was the diary his daughter had written in her own distinctive hand and illustrated with photos and newspaper clippings while the family was hiding in the Secret Annexe.

... contd.