Otto Heinrich Frank

Otto Heinrich Frank

I have never really asked myself who my hero is – or rather I have never succeeded in finding my real HERO: of course there are beautiful actors, super intelligent people, ultra-loyal or devoted people…but all those qualities together? I don’t think so. That’s why, in order to answer this question, I chose to specify only one field of heroism.

I think that courage, loyalty, and love are three words which perfectly describe Otto Frank. Otto Frank is Anne Frank’s father. If I talk in this short essay about Otto Frank, I’m not forgetting his family strength of living, but it is because he has had during all his life the responsibility to represent his family's pain.

Everybody knows the Franks’ family history thanks to Anne’s world famous diary which charts two years of her life from 1942 to 1944, when her family were hiding in Amsterdam from German Nazis. The diary begins just before the family retreated into their 'Secret Annexe'. In 1944, 10.000 Jews went into hiding and some 5.000 were betrayed and arrested by the Gestapo. SS Officer Karl Joseph Silberbauer arrested the Frank and the Van Pels families. The Franks were transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where Anne's mother died. Anne and her sister were transferred from the Dutch concentration camp, Westerbork, to Bergen-Belsen where they both died of typhus. Otto Frank published in 1947 Anne’s diary: HET ACHTERHUIS. The diary has been translated into some 60 languages since its publication.

I think that all his life reflects the very strong love for his own family. He had done the best of what he could do in his life: he had tried to save his wife, girls and friends during the war; he had tried to help them live the best they could during 5 awful years. He succeeded in transmitting to them enough courage to live happy in despair. I think that we can understand Otto’s valour with this extract of his daughter's book: "Whoever is happy will make others happy too. He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!" (The Diary of a Young Girl)

For simple information, the family was betrayed before Frank finished her work. The final entry is 1 August 1944. On 4 August they were arrested.