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Otto Frank's letters discovered

One of the most popular sites to visit in Amsterdam is Anne Frank's house. It recalls and evokes the memory of not only this young woman - and the diary which has now become so famous - but all that goes with the Holocaust and World War II.

Time reports today:

"Two summers ago, Estelle Guzik, a volunteer archivist at New York City's YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, came across a curious file previously not indexed: a cache of letters written by Anne Frank's father, Otto. The roughly 80 documents, including considerable correspondence from Otto Frank to friends, family and officials, reveal just how desperately Mr. Frank—who survived the Holocaust—was trying to save his wife Edith, his mother-in-law Rosa Hollander and his daughters Margot and Anne.

The until now undisclosed trove of documents include letters Otto Frank wrote between April 30, 1941 and Dec. 11, 1941 (when Germany declared war on the U.S.), as well as correspondence from his U.S. relatives and a university friend, New York's Nathan Straus Jr., the son of the Macy's department store's founder. The Franks began their two years in hiding in an attic above Otto Frank's office in July 1942."

The complete Time piece can be read here.



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