5 Westerbork

Chapter 5 Westerbork August 4, 1944 was a warm, still summer's day. At the heacquarters of the Nazi Secret Police, the telephone rang. An officer picked up the receiver and listened for a while. Then he quickly left the building accompanied by a number of Dutch police. They parked outside Otto's office and marched into the building. "We know everything," the Nazi officer announced. "You're hiding Jews and they're in this building. Take us to them." Helplessly, Victor Kugler, the Franks' friend and helper, took the police up to the annexe. The police went into each of the rooms, rounding everyone up, forcing them to put their hands in the air. Margot wept softly.

An hour later, they were out on the street, along with Kugler and Kleiman, being ordered into a police van. "I'm sorry," Otto said to Kleiman, on their way to prison. "To think that you're sitting here among us, that we are to blame..." "Don't give it another thought," Kleiman interrupted him. "I wouldn't have done it any differently." Kleiman and Kugler were taken away for questioning. After three days in filthy overcrowded prisons, the eight members of the annexe were sent on a train to Westerbork.

"At least we're still together," said Otto. After the numbness of the past few days, Anne felt strangely cheerful. "Perhaps the war will end before they can send us to the death camps," she thought. "And right now, right this moment, I'm outside. I feel almost free. I can feel the sun on my face again." At Westerbork, the Franks lined up to register. They were marked down as criminals for being in hiding, and sent to one of the punishment blocks. There, they were stripped of their clothes and handed blue overalls, marked with red thread to show they were criminals, and given wooden clogs to wear. Then the men had their heads shaved and the women had their hair shorn painfully short. Anne minded dreadfully about losing her hair. Otto was sent to the men's barracks, Edith, Margot and Anne to the women's. "Don't worry," Edith told her daughters. "We'll still see Daddy in the evenings. "Yes," whispered Anne, clinging to her mother as if she were a small child again.

Each day, work began at five in the morning, chopping up metal batteries. Anne was horrified when she realized what they had to do. "Chop open the batteries with a chisel and hammer," they were told. "Put tar in one basket and carbon bars in the other." It was messy work. The batteries gave off a kind of dust, and Margot and Anne couldn't stop coughing. "But at least we can talk!" Anne said to the girls, Janny and Lientje, sitting next to her. For lunch they received a piece of stale bread and a few spoonfuls of watery soup.

Margot eyed it dolefully. "I never thought we'd actually be caught," she said. "I know." Anne replied. "But let's stay hopeful. The end of the war must come soon. If we can just stay here, we'll survive." Otto helped calm his daughters too, visiting them at night to tell them stories. A month later, a feeling of panic flooded through the camp. There was to be another transport out of Westerbork, to a camp in the east. A long train of cattle trucks rolled into Westerbork that night. By eleven the next morning, 1,019 people had been loaded on and the doors bolted shut. The van Pelses, Pfeffer and the Franks were among them.