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Summary
Summary
In this shocking and definitive new biography, Carol Ann Lee provides the answer to one of the most heartbreaking questions of modern times: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis? Probing this startling act of treachery, Lee brings to light never-before-documented information about Anne's father, Otto Frank, and the individual who would claim responsibility -- and their terrifying and complicated relationship that continued until the day Frank died.
With The Hidden Life of Otto Frank, Carol Ann Lee presents an astonishing and moving portrait of a man whose life, both charmed and cursed, was interwoven with one of the most momentous events of the last century as the father of Anne Frank. Based on impeccable research into rare archives and filled with excerpts from the secret journal that he kept from the day of his liberation from Auschwitz until his return to the secret annex in 1945, this landmark biography explores every facet of Frank's life. The publication of Anne Frank's diary turned this quietly heroic man into a legend, but until now, apart from a few basic facts, almost nothing has been written about Otto Frank's own extraordinary life.
The father of the most famous young girl of the twentieth century, Otto Frank was born a month before Adolf Hitler, and grew up in a wealthy German Jewish household. In World War I, he fought for Germany -- which he believed to be his homeland -- as an officer in the trenches of the Somme. Lee documents these privileged early years, when Frank and his family were models of wholly assembled European Jewry. She also reveals the full story behind Frank's first cruelly thwarted love affair, as well as the truth about his subsequent arranged marriage to Anne's mother.
After struggling to establish a business in Amsterdam, Frank and his family spent happy years together before the war. Then came their period in hiding, their eventual betrayal, and their internment in the death camps of Poland and Germany. For the first time, Frank's experiences during and after Auschwitz -- and during his return to Amsterdam, where, wholly destitute, he lost everything "except life" -- are told in full. The subsequent delivery of his daughter's diary, and the publishing phenomenon that ensued, helped him begin to recover.
Deeply moving and powerfully honest, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank authoritatively brings into focus a little-understood man whose story illuminates some of the most harrowing and memorable events of the last century.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Anne Frank and her family are hallowed symbols of all the lives lost in the Holocaust, but the identity of the person who revealed the "secret annex" in which they hid for two years from the Nazis has always remained a mystery. Lee (Roses from the Earth: The Biography of Anne Frank) has, through vigorous, dedicated detective work, uncovered his probable identity. More important, she has uncovered a startling aspect of Otto Frank's life. According to Lee, the Franks were betrayed by Tonny (Anton) Ahlers, a young, troubled, even thuggish, Dutch youth and Nazi informer. But there is more: in 1941, Ahlers saved the Frank family from deportation, but he also began blackmailing Otto after discovering that Frank's food and spice business was selling to the German army. Ahlers's blackmail continued until Otto's death in 1980, during the years when Anne's diary became famous and Otto could not risk being seen as a war profiteer. Lee's plain but compelling reporting style suits this material, which is presented as part historical analysis and part mystery. The power of the book, however, resides in her rich, human portrait of Otto Frank, who can now be seen as more than simply "Anne's father." Lee's instinct for displaying the humanity of her subjects is best attested to by her portrayal of Tonny Ahlers, which is so engaging and frighteningly complex that readers will want to know more about him. (Feb.) Forecast: This will undoubtedly cause a stir both in the media and in the world of Holocaust studies, and find readers among a wider audience than the average Holocaust title. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A troubling portrait of an iconic figure of the Holocaust and his sad, secretive life during and after the Nazi era. Lee, a biographer of Otto's daughter (Roses from the Earth, not reviewed, etc.) and associate of the Anne Frank Trust, brings due sympathy to bear on Otto, a German Jew who had served with distinction in the Kaiser's army, succeeded in business, but was forced out of Nazi Germany into neighboring Holland. There he established a spice-importing firm, some of whose employees were members of the Dutch Nazi Party-many Netherlanders, Lee writes, were glad to join the crusade to purge Europe of Jews; whereas the survival rate for French Jews was something like 75 percent, only 25 percent of those in the Netherlands saw the fall of the Nazi regime. A Dutch Nazi acquaintance of one of those employees began to blackmail Otto, and for a time he kept the knowledge of Frank's secret annex to himself until someone-Lee has a strong opinion on who that was-phoned the Gestapo to betray the Frank family. Amazingly, the blackmail resumed after the war and Otto's relocation to Switzerland. What was the basis of thug Tonny Ahlers's hold over Otto? Lee suggests that it had to do with Frank's collaboration with the occupying Wehrmacht, to which he sold pectin and other materiel; adultery may have figured into the matter, too, for Ahlers's acquaintance suspected that his wife had been having an affair with Frank. Lee does not condemn Frank, though she points to some strange choices he made while editing his daughter's famous diaries for publication, as well as his approval of a German translation that altered lines such as "only the language of civilized people may be spoken, thus no German" to "all civilized languages . . . but softly!"-all of which brought Frank fortune, and Ahlers too. A curious study of fleshly weakness and the will to survive-and a representation certain to yield controversy. Agent: Eva Koralnik/Eva Koralnik Liepman Agency, Zurich
Booklist Review
Anne Frank's father, Otto, was the only member of the famous Amsterdam family to survive the concentration camps, and his postwar years were devoted to preserving Anne's memory by publishing her diary--perhaps the most widely read Holocaust work ever--and establishing a charitable foundation in her name. Life after Anne was as surrounded by controversy as it was filled with sorrow. Otto was criticized for his editing of his daughter's diary, chastised for dramatic adaptations downplaying the family's Jewishness, and even accused of wartime opportunism because of his company's contract with the Wehrmacht. The question of who betrayed the Franks to the authorities continues to be a hot topic in the Netherlands. This selection attempts to clear Otto's name while filling in the details of his life. Incorporating new interviews and previously unpublished fragments of Otto's own diary, Lee fingers a previously unsuspected informer, and her convincing detective work may, 60 years later, finally be the last word. Perhaps more important, her biography illustrates the complicated entanglement of resistance and complicity that still haunts Amsterdam. --Brendan Driscoll
Library Journal Review
Otto Frank's story is often viewed in the shadow of his daughter Anne. Lee, whose previous efforts include a biography of Anne Frank, takes Otto out of the shadows in this sympathetic yet thorough portrait of a man who was more than Anne Frank's father and literary executor. A World War I veteran, Otto was emblematic of those middle-class, assimilated German Jews who fled the Nazis after 1933. Moving to Amsterdam, he ran a successful business, even after the Nazis overran the Netherlands in 1940. Lee's study reveals, among other details, Otto's experiences in Auschwitz, his postwar efforts on behalf of his extended family, and the identity of the man who betrayed his hiding place to the Nazis. According to the information uncovered by Lee, Otto had extensive business dealings with a Dutch Nazi named Ahlers, who was being paid to keep silent about the Frank family's hiding place. Lee provides a plausible explanation for why Ahlers betrayed the family and why Otto kept silent about his betrayer's identity even after the war. Otto Frank will likely remain eclipsed by his famous daughter, but this well-researched book provides insight into his life beyond that of the famous diary. Recommended for all libraries.-Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. xi |
| Preface | p. xv |
| Prologue: The Letter | p. 1 |
| 1 Germany | p. 7 |
| 2 Fatherhood and Exile | p. 29 |
| 3 Entrapment | p. 49 |
| 4 A Very Dangerous Young Man | p. 73 |
| 5 Out of Sight | p. 96 |
| 6 Betrayal | p. 118 |
| 7 Unforgettable Marks on My Soul | p. 141 |
| 8 Everything Is Like a Strange Dream | p. 163 |
| 9 This at Least Has Survived | p. 187 |
| 10 Publish Without a Doubt | p. 212 |
| 11 The Question of a Jewish or Non-Jewish Writer | p. 237 |
| 12 I Have No Scars Left | p. 264 |
| 13 The Legacy | p. 296 |
| Epilogue: The Telephone Call | p. 315 |
| Appendix A Chronology of the Jewish Persecution in the Netherlands | p. 327 |
| Appendix B Dramatis Personae | p. 333 |
| Appendix C Glossary | p. 339 |
| Notes | p. 343 |
| Bibliography | p. 381 |
| Index | p. 391 |