The Nazis were ingenious at using subterfuge to maintain the pretense of legality. To gain the trust of Jews, in early 1941 they took over the long-established Jewish bank Lippmann-Rosenthal and turned it into a loot bank. Jews were forced to hand over their assets and all objects of value. They could keep “wedding rings, silver wristwatches and pocket watches, one set of silverware consisting of a knife, a fork, a soupspoon and a dessertspoon.”1 Statements were issued to clients and in some cases interest was paid, but it was a pseudobank. Jewish capital was actually being accumulated to pay for the eventual deportations and the maintenance of forced labor and concentration camps.
The deportations began in the summer of 1942. When selected for deportation, Jews were told to hand over their house keys to the Dutch police, along with a list of house contents. Everything was taken, from furniture to valuable art. The Nazis were good at euphemisms. When art was looted, the official term was Sicherstellung （safekeeping）。2
After the first deportations, a Dutch protest leaflet was circulated by the resistance that explained things clearly:
All prior German measures had aimed at isolating the Jews from the rest of the Dutch, to make contact impossible, and to kill our sentiments concerning living side by side and in solidarity. They have succeeded much better than we know ourselves or are probably willing to admit. The Jews have to be killed in secrecy and we, the witnesses, must remain deaf, blind, and silent. . . . God and history will condemn us and hold us partly responsible for this mass murder if we now remain silent and simply look on.3
None of these developments went unnoticed by Otto Frank. In the beginning, the restrictions seemed eccentric and temporary. Walking to and from work each day, he would find himself not being allowed to take the tram or not even being allowed to sit down at an outdoor café to rest his feet. He would tamp down his anger. But when the BBC reported in June 1942 that seven hundred thousand Jews had perished in Germany and the occupied territories,4 he understood that what was at stake was not simply segregation but rather impending annihilation. There would be no obtaining visas for his family. He knew that the next step must be to go into hiding.
9
The Hiding
There are two versions of the Frank family’s finding refuge in the Annex. According to the German author and radio personality Ernst Schnabel in his 1958 book The Footsteps of Anne Frank, Kleiman and Kugler approached Otto and said it was time to think of going into hiding, proposing the Annex behind Prinsengracht 263.1 Melissa Müller, in her biography of Anne Frank, concurred that Kleiman, as early as the summer of 1941, proposed the empty rooms in the Annex as an ingenious hiding place because no one would ever think of Frank hiding on his own business premises.2 Bep’s son Joop had been told by his mother that Kleiman had suggested the Annex and then Kugler had been included in the plan.3 But Otto had been thinking of going into hiding as early as December 1940, and it may be that he rented Prinsengracht 263 with hiding in mind.4
Otto would later say that it was he who had approached his employees with the plan of going into hiding: first Kleiman, then Kugler, then Miep, then Bep. Miep confirmed this:
The initiative to go into hiding, to find a hiding place, to organize everything for it, came from Otto Frank. He thought it all out . . . and he had already divided certain different tasks for his staff members when he asked them to help him and his family in hiding.5
Whoever was the source of the idea, it created a painful situation for Otto. What an incredible question he was forced to ask: Will you help save me, save my family? The Germans had threatened to imprison any Dutch citizen who helped Jews. It would have been typical of Otto to ask each person himself and to stress that they understood what it would mean if they said yes. How hard to place his employees in such a position! And equally hard to find in himself such complete trust that he could put the fate of his family entirely into their hands.
Miep remembered the morning Otto had asked for her help. He had come to the office wearing a yellow star affixed to his coat. Everyone had pretended it was not there. She recalled his phrasing: “Are you willing to take on the responsibility of taking care of us while we are in hiding?” In a practical sense that would mean shopping for the family, obtaining forged ration cards or buying them on the black market, finding food.
“Of course,” she replied.
She added, “There is a look between two people once or twice in a lifetime that cannot be described by words. That look passed between us. . . . I asked no further questions. . . . I felt no curiosity. I had given my word.”6