Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501310056
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS LENGTH: Medium
The gut-wrenching letter by Otto Frank expresses his wonder at his own survival as well as the pain of not knowing the fate of his wife and daughters.
``Dear Milly, I hope this letter will reach you, giving you the news that I am living. It really is a wonder,'' Frank wrote in March 1945 to his second cousin Milly Stanfield, who lived in Britain.
``I have lost everything except my life. Nothing from our possessions has survived. No photo, no letter from my children, nothing, nothing,'' Frank wrote from Katowice, a city in southern Poland near the Auschwitz camp.
He was unaware then that his wife, Edith, died at Auschwitz and their daughters, Anne and Margot, died during a typhus epidemic that March in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
He was in a hospital at Auschwitz when it was liberated on Jan.27, 1945, by the advancing Soviet army.
Frank eventually made his way back to Amsterdam, where he found the diary Anne had written during the two years the Jewish family had spent in hiding. With its poignancy, insight and humor, the teen-ager's diary touched readers worldwide.
Her father's letter was printed in the Rotterdam daily Algemeen Dagblad to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The Anne Frank Foundation received it about six months ago from the cousin but did not immediately publicize the letter because it hoped to use it in a future exhibition, Teresien da Silva of the foundation said Saturday.
``The letter does tell us what kind of state he was in,'' said da Silva. ``It told what he knew at that time. He didn't know whether his children were still alive.''
The letter was written in English and appeared in the newspaper in a Dutch translation.
``I long for you all and I feel much better now weighing 60 kilograms [132 pounds] again,'' he wrote. ``How will I find you all and all my old friends? I was always optimistic and I am still trying the best.''
After fleeing Germany to avoid Nazi persecution in 1933, the Franks settled in Amsterdam. But the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940, and in July 1942 the Frank family and several Jewish friends went into hiding.
Otto described to Milly the memories of his life in hiding.
``Our friends took care of us, fetched our food and everything we needed, despite all the danger.''
But in August 1944, the hiding place was betrayed to the Nazis. Anne's diary was found later among a pile of old books, magazines and newspapers left lying on the floor after the Nazi raid.
Otto Frank died in 1980 in Birsfelden, Switzerland.
``Milly had kept the letter all these years,'' said da Silva. ``It has an emotional value for her.''
by CNB