Her touching tribute to Anne Frank at Belsen
ANNE Frank was born in 1929. She was a year older than Princess Margaret and three years younger than Princess Elizabeth, who was the same age as Anne’s sister, Margot.
For her 13th birthday, on June 12, 1942, Anne’s father, Otto Frank, gave her a red and white chequered autograph book, which she used as a diary.
She was ambitious: she wrote in her diary that she dreamt of becoming a journalist, ‘and later on a famous writer’.
A month after Anne began writing her diary, on July 6, 1942, the Frank family – Anne and Margot, together with their mother and father – went into hiding from the Nazis. For the next two years and 30 days, they were to remain in the small attic annexe of Prinsengracht 263, in central Amsterdam, unable to venture outside, or even to look out of a window, for fear of being seen.
Anne set to work decorating the bedroom she shared with Margot. ‘Thanks to Father – who brought my entire postcard and movie-star collection here beforehand – and to a brush and a pot of glue, I was able to plaster the walls with pictures. It looks much more cheerful.’
Among these pictures were two little black and white photographs: one of Princess Elizabeth and the other of Princess Margaret. They were symbols of hope: Britain was free, and so were the little Princesses.
‘Today is the 18th birthday of Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth of York,’ Anne wrote in her diary on April 21, 1944, nearly two years into her time in the annexe. ‘We’ve been wondering which prince they’ll marry this beauty off to, but can’t think of a suitable candidate; perhaps her sister, Princess Margaret Rose, can have Crown Prince Baudouin of Belgium!’
On the morning of August 4, 1944, the Franks’ hiding place was raided by the police. They were led away at gunpoint. Picking up Otto Frank’s briefcase, the chief policeman saw a book inside it and threw it to the floor, to make room for the small quantity of valuables and money he had found. This was the diary of Anne Frank.
The family were transported to Auschwitz on the very last train to the concentration camp.
In November, Anne and Margot were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen. At some time in February or early March 1945, Margot died, followed, the next day, by Anne.
THIRTY years later, in 1974, Queen Elizabeth II learned that Anne had stuck pictures of her and her sister to her bedroom wall. She wrote to Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the family, expressing the hope that ‘perhaps this photograph gave your daughter a moment’s pleasure during that dreadful time’.
On June 26, 2015, at the age of 89, the Queen visited the BergenBelsen concentration camp in northern Germany to commemorate the 70th anniversary of its liberation by British soldiers.
First, she met a small group of survivors and their liberators. Then she walked to the memorial gravestone to Margot Frank, 1926–1945, and Anne Frank, 1929–1945, and bowed her head in homage.