Letters from Anne Frank's dad released

[Doondoo]

Anne Frank's father tried to arrange U.S. visas for his family before they went into hiding, but his efforts were hampered by restrictive immigration policies designed to protect national security, Holocaust experts said Wednesday.

Otto Frank first applied for the immigration visas for himself and his family in 1938, reviving his efforts only in 1941 – a move that may seem lax with what is now known about the Holocaust but which was logical to Mr. Frank at the time.

“He preferred what seemed to him like the nuisances that encumbered an otherwise comfortable life under Nazi occupation in the Netherlands to the insecurity of a life as a double refugee in a new country, even if a new country could have been found,” said David Engel, a professor of Holocaust studies at New York University.

.......

Letters, documents and records from various agencies that helped people immigrate from Europe illuminate Mr. Frank's attempts to get the family out of Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The documents were released Wednesday by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The documents include letters that Frank wrote to relatives, friends and officials between April 30, 1941, and Dec. 11, 1941, when Germany declared war on the United States.

The information documents how Frank tried to arrange for his family – wife Edith, daughters Margo and Anne and mother-in-law Rosa Hollander – to go to the United States or Cuba.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070214.wottofrank0214/BNStory/International/home

[Raine]

1. They could have been saved

and others too, such a shame. :-(

[LostinVA]

2. Voyage of the Damned -- the US government had so much to be proud of then

Yeah, major sarcasm.