she knew that her father was still alive. When her sister died, she just gave up. But she and her father were extremely close and it has been said in books that if she knew that her father was still alive, she probably would have clung on to life.
shareHer parents would've sent her to switzerland to live with her Gramma before the war.
I don't want to
I don't have to
You can't make me
Cause I'm Special
well at first i thought having her dad alive would make her go on but think about it - very little water, hardly any food. how is knowing the person you're closest to is still alive make you get a will to live when you're exhausted and dying of hunger and dehydration????? i'm not calling you stupid but i just don't think she had a chance knowing her dad was alive. i'm not saying bad things, i'm A HUGE FAN OF ANNE, but even knowing her dad was alive wouldn't help anything. RIP
shareIf Anne knew that her father was still alive I think she would have tried to fight to stay alive herself, but even if she did have this hope, she still caught typhus and this is what killed her.
I think Anne would have survive if Otto had taken them all to live in Switzerland. It was their biggest mistake to stay in Holland.
But the way I see it is that Anne did survive, as she is immortal through the voice of her diary.
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There is just so much the mind can do to keep the body alive. If she would have known her dad was alive and tried her best to survive, she still would have died. She was put through way too much that hope wouldn't have sustained her. It is a nice enough idea about hope keeping someone alive, but this is just a whole different situation. If you tried as long as she was in the camps to keep alive on mere hope you would have succumbed to death as well.
shareworld war I had never happened; beyond that, i wouldn't speculate. i do know that had i been in her place, i wouldn't have made it to the concentration camp alive, having been killed by my fellow jews in the cattle car when i started bickering with someone squeezed in next to me to stop hogging all the space or air or something; i'm basing this on how i behave in the nyc subway, hardly a transport to auschwitz but no day at the beach, either--
anne frank is not only a great writer, but also a wonderful teacher of decency, our only hope of resisting the downward tug of barbarism, cruelty and stupidity--
God bless you, anne frank, and all the poor souls who perished in the holocaust--
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Okay, let's get this straight, we are making conclusions of hope from one hour in the movie where Anne and her family are in the camps, right? Well, think of it in this way: In that hour you only get the visual part of what some went through. Then, instead of only an hour of visual suffering, add months and months on to that, but add the way it feels to be malnurished (which I doubt you are right now), without water, unhygenic and psychosis from the environment, because let's face it, after too long the mind will become pretty ravaged, too. Only if you were one of Hitler's so-called ubermench (supermen) would you be able to survive that situation.
shareWell at least if she knew her father was still alive she could have died with a happy thought in her mind. So sad she did not know.
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Otto did have a cousin in England, Millie Stanhope, who offered to take BOTH girls and Otto and Edith refused to split up the family. That would probably have saved the girls. Read the Hidden Life of Otto Frank by Carol Lee for that part of the story. Millie never got over it.
shareShe would have still suffered from typhus and died even if she'd know her father was living. And even by that point she had lost Margot, she was weak herself with no food to sustain her. Odds are against the Otto being alive theory. BUT if otto had taken then to switzerland or england, than yes, both margot and anne would have survied. We also wouldn't have Anne's wonderful voice either. But I would still choose for her life over her writing.
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You would be amazed how powerful a will to live is. I remember when my grandmother was first diagnosed with cancer, the doctor gave her only a few weeks, maybe a couple of months if she is lucky. She however decided she was not ready to die yet. The cancer actually went into remission for two years. I think if Anne knew her father was still alive then maybe she could have found away to hold on. Maybe that's how Otto survived, because he felt that there was a chance his daughters would survive too.
shareI would be inclined to agree with those who say that she could not have survived, but keep in mind that she survived until two weeks before the camp's liberation with the belief that her father was dead. Affirmative knowledge of her father's survival, not just rumors, could have sustained her. If not that, affirmative knowledge that the camp was going to be liberated within two weeks would have. Let's also keep in mind that Anne Frank was no ordinary girl. While that may sound cliche, her willpower was indeed extraordinary. Anyone is extraordinary who is able to survive six weeks at Auschwitz.
shareFirst of all, Anne and Margot Frank died at Bergen-Belsen in Germany, not Auschwitz in Poland.
I would be willing to bet that most people who commented on this post haven't even read about the concentration camp which she died. People today cannot fathom the psychological or physical stress that people endured at these camps, let alone what they already went through.
It's easy to sit here in the present and make accusations about events that happened before your time in a time and place you've never been to or experienced.
Reality check: All the occupants of the "Secret Annex" died between 1944 and 1945 except for Otto Frank. Fact.
YouTube provides amazing first hand accounts, photographs and films about Bergen-Belsen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hLYavpMSFs - Richard Dimbleby reporting from Bergen-Belsen April 1945 Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opn15-59L1I&feature=iv&annotati on_id=annotation_867907 - Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iFFGbF_Yjo - Film of Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 during the liberation.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224 - Facts about Bergen-Belsen from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
http://www.ou.org/yerushalayim/threeweeks/annefrank.html - First hand account of a woman who saw Anne Frank at Bergen-Belsen.
"Toto, I've [got] a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
Many family members would have taken the girls in. Otto's cousin in the UK offered to take the girls. Edith's brothers in the US wanted to find a way to take them, but they were themselves in dire monetary circumstances. Otto had family in Switzerland too. But many of these countries were closing borders, especially to adults. The best chance was probably the UK, which was taking Jewish children up until the very last moments before the war. But families didn't want to be separated.
Otto and many others put faith in the Netherlands' neutrality being honored (it wasn't, of course) and the thought that any war started by Germany would lead to its quick defeat. Germany's military buildup was vastly underestimated, while France's fortifications along the German border were bypassed completely by them going through the Low Countries, leading to France's unexpected quick defeat, the UK's isolation, and a mostly occupied western Europe.
I understand that, but nonetheless she survived for a period of six months in the camp. I don't know how the hell she made this possible, but she was able to despite the psychological and physical stress she was enduring. Most of this period took place while she held the belief that her father was dead. Had she known, who knows...
shareThe human body is an amazing piece of biological engineering but like all things, it has it's breaking point regardless of how mentally strong you are. If you read the first hand account, the girl didn't even know she was dying.
You can't change facts and speculation is exactly that--a hypothetical.
"Toto, I've [got] a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
I had neglected to clarify that I am aware that Anne died in Belsen, not Birkenau, I was only saying that anyone capable of withstanding a month and a half of horror, as a young girl like Anne was able to before her deportation, was strong.
Additionally, I have read about as much as I can about Anne's life in the concentration camps, the most detailed of which is, from the looks of it, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank, which pieces together multiple first person accounts to depict what the last months of Anne's life must have been like (five accounts as I recall). It seems that TWS borrows heavily from these accounts to paint a comprehensive picture of Anne's last months.
Irma's account, which I have already read and am familiar with,and which was not included in the book, seems to go against every other documentation and first person account I have read and simply does not seem to match up with the others. It is vicious to accuse Irma of dishonesty, and - make no mistake - I am not, I only suspect that the conditions accompanying her advanced age combined with the inability to comprehend the horrors of her situation years later may have produced fuzzy results. The way I see it is that 17,000 people died of Typhus in Belsen, I feel it is likely that only so many people could have both survived and had contact with this one girl. I have always been led to suspect that the girl Irma encountered may not have been Anne, athough it does sound like her.
I am not disputing that knowledge of her father's survival may not be enough, but make no mistake, I am not ignorant of the conditions Anne was facing. Heck, even knowledge of the camp's liberation by the Russians within a few weeks may not have been enough, judging by some accounts that testify how much they were dreaded by some camp prisoners.
Belsen was liberated by the British.
Blah, blah, blah.
Clearly he never looked any of the video links above or researched, ignorance is bliss.
"Toto, I've [got] a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
What I find remarkable is that Anne was able even to survive for as long as she was in Belsen. What could possibly have sustained her and her sister for so long, neither of whom had had their survival skills remotely tested to that level previously?
shareAnd, I think you also have to take into persective how the film was portraying her. In short, the real Anne Frank probably would not have been sustained. But, seeing as the Film Version Anne seemed to give up any remaining wish or desire to stay alive after Margot died, I suspect affirmative knowledge of Otto's survival would have sustained her, accompanied by perhaps Margot's survival or affirmative knowledge of the camp's liberation by the British.
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In a Holocaust History class I took in college I recall reading that survival was sporadic and there was no set rules on how to do so. But that some of the one's who did survive had the knowledge of people on the outside waiting for them. With Margot dead I do think Anne lost a little more of her will to survive, but of course there is no concrete way to know that Anne could have possibly survived if she knew her father was still alive. Yes she was sick but so were others around her, like I said earlier it was really a crapshoot on survival.
Lois & Clark 4EVER!!!
DC can SUCK IT!!!!
I think its very possible that she would have survived if she would have known her father was alive. Look at how much she loved him, and look at her reaction when she was separated from him.
I know many don't think that the mind can help the body last for too long in those camps, but if you read ''Man's Search for Meaning'' by Viktor Frankl, he gives an in depth look at what happened in the camps. He said the reason why he survived is because he had a rich inner life. He always imagined teaching his students at the university, and he thought his wife was alive. He says that those who survived lasted because they didn't give up and sell their souls to what was going on around them. ''Selling your soul'' ranged from double dealing with the Nazis and being traitor, to lowering oneself to playing dirty tactics to survive, or to just plain old give into despair and hope.
Several biographers and historians have said the same thing.
shareIt's impossible to know, of course, but typhus has a high mortality rate without treatment (60% plus) even in people who aren't being starved and worked to death, and in the final weeks at Bergen-Belsen prior to liberation conditions were almost unimaginably terrible, with prisoners surviving (if at all) on little to no food, and finally lacking any source of unpolluted water.
The death rate accelerated even as liberation approached, and the prospect of the Allies arriving terrified many of the prisoners, who expected that they would be massacred rather than being left alive to be freed and bear witness against their former guards.
It is worth noting that many thousands of inmates died in the weeks * after * being liberated; their long hoped for rescue sadly wasn't enough to allow their bodies to recover from the systematic abuse they had suffered over such a long period, and they were simply too far gone to be helped, despite the best efforts of medics.
There is a drama/documentary, which is available on youtube, called 'The Relief of Belsen' which gives a harrowing account of what happened there. I had always thought that if Anne and Margot had been able to hold on until the British arrived, they would have made it, but having watched that programme I realised that was not necessarily the case.
I really don't think that knowing that her father was alive would have saved Anne's life.
People like to imagine that the sheer willpower can change the fate of a person, but reality is different from fairy tales.
In March 1945, after seven months of detention in concentration camps, Anne was, according to the last people who saw her, nothing but skin and bones.
A body under these conditions can not hold long typhus, regardless of willpower.
Remember also that the survival of Anne (and of the other lodgers of the secret annex) would not have been guaranteed even if the annex had never been discovered: the winter of 1944-45 became known in the Netherlands as the "hunger winter", and adult food rations in February 1945 had dropped to 500 kilocalories per person; Anne, judging from the photos, was a thin girl even before going into hiding, she would hardly have passed this ordeal.
In hindsight, I think that Anne could have saved her life only if the war was over by 1944.
This looked likely in August 1944, but the failure in September of operation Market Garden, which was intended to liberate the Netherlands and open the road to Berlin to the British and American armies, convinced the Allies to stop the offensive for most of the fall and winter, until March 1945.
This hesitation was fatal to Anne.
Otto had no clue, as did all the other Jewish refugees, that Holland would become an occupied country.
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