Anne Frank

Dear Editor,

Certain memories have haunted me from my childhood in Denver. They tie in with Anne Frank's Diary.

Displaced families from Hitler's Nazi Europe moved into our neighborhood in the autumn of 1939. They had escaped from bad situations. During this time it was not unusual for five or six languages to be spoken on the playground of Dora Moore Elementary School.

We played hopscotch, kickball and other games and seemed to get along quite well. After a couple or three years, we all seemed to have adjusted quite well to each other, with no problems.

Then one day, when I was in the fourth grade, I heard some parents talking, then they picked up their children. "There are so many Jews in our neighborhood. We're being over-run by them," they said. Some of the Jewish students overheard them. They begged me not to tell anyone they were Jewish. I promised that I wouldn't say a word.

Recently, I learned that Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, took his family to Holland in 1941-42.

Otto Frank pleaded with friends and relatives to help him to get visas to our country, or even Cuba. U.S. Officials and immigration restrictions blocked his efforts.

His family ended up hiding in an attic in Amsterdam. Then, they were discovered in 1944 and taken to a concentration camp. Anne, her sister, Margot and their mother, Edith, died in Bergen-Belsen. Otto Frank survived in the camp at Auschwitz.

Since writing the above, I've discovered more facts. (The Internet is a great resource)

According to a printout from the New York Times in February 2007, Christopher Bodkin, a Republican town councilman from Long Island, N.Y., wanted to make Anne Frank an honorary U.S. Citizen.

Bodkin asked his friend, Steve Israel, a Democrat Representative of the state of New York, for help. Their efforts failed. Previously, Israel had tried unsuccessfully to get Anne on a U.S. postage stamp (There was no problem honoring Mickey Mouse, Spider-Man or the Incredible Hulk on U.S. stamps.)

Does the U.S. have the right to claim Anne Frank or her family? Bodkins sums it all up by saying "Anne Frank is a stateless person."

Bernd Elias, Anne's first cousin, who is president of the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, rejects the idea of honorary citizenship. He states that Anne saw herself as being Dutch.

Recently, letters written by Otto Frank, Anne's father, have surfaced. They were stored in a New Jersey warehouse. He had written his college friend, Nathan Straus. He asked for a loan of $5,000 to get his family a deposit to obtain a visa to come to the U.S. Nathan was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt and director of the Federal Housing Authority.

The State Department tightened restrictions and they never came.

Helen Ruth Arnold,

Trenton, Nebraska