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Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Eighty years ago...

"Margot's friend Laureen Nussbaum recalls:

It was agony. Some of my friends wanted to go when the call-up came because they did not expect anything too bad, but their parents begged them to stay and hide, while the parents of other friends made them obey the call-up in order to save the rest of the family."

Page 96 of Carol Ann Lee's The Hidden Life of Otto Frank

"Most damaging of all was the Dutch bureaucracy...There were never more than 200 German policemen operating in Amsterdam, but occupying forces were able to perform their duties without wide- scale interference...the newspaper Vrij Nederland admitted: 'Unnoticed, the poison of propaganda has affected us, and its after-effects will be felt for a long time, especially in our children, who have been used to it and do not know any better. For them, being a Jew means being a constant exception.'"

Page 94 of Carol Ann Lee's The Hidden Life of Otto Frank

"In preparation for the deportations from the Netherlands, the German administration had taken over Westerbork refugee camp, surrounding it with barbed wire and installing armed SS men throughout...In return for exemption from the transports, a number of German Jews remained in charge of the actual administration."

Page 92 of Carol Ann Lee's The Hidden Life of Otto Frank

"Otto also employed two men who were members of the NSB. Miep recalls a conversation she had with Otto about one of them, a sales rep named Daatselaar: 'Mr. Frank had been aware of his membership in the Dutch Nazi Party before he'd gone into hiding because the man wore an NSB pin on his lapel. I remembered that Mr. Frank had commented, 'This man you can trust. I know he's not a Nazi at heart. He must have joined the NSB because he was hanging around with a bunch of young men who joined. Being a bachelor and needing a social life, that's why he joined too.'"

Page 84 -85 of Carol Ann Lee's The Hidden Life of Otto Frank

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