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Anne Frank probably dies one month earlier than assumed in WWII: research

Xinhua, March 31, 2015 Adjust font size:

Jewish World War II victim Anne Frank is thought to have died in February 1945, one month earlier than was previously assumed, the Amsterdam-based Anne Frank House announced after new research shed new light on her last months.

Anne Frank, born on June 12, 1929, became one of the most famous Jewish victims of the Holocaust, with her wartime diary being published in several languages and being the basis for several plays and films.

Due to the increasing persecutions of the Jewish population in the Netherlands, which was occupied by Nazi Germany at that time, Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in Amsterdam in 1942 and two years later they were found and transported to concentration camps in Germany. Anne Frank and her elder sister Margot Frank ended up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

The Frank sisters died 70 years ago of typhus at this camp but the exact date of their death is unknown. At the time, the Red Cross officially concluded that they had died at some time between March 1 and 31, 1945. The Dutch authorities later set the official date of the sisters' death at March 31, two weeks before the camp was liberated by the Allied forces.

In the new research into the last months of Anne and Margot, researchers studied the archives of the Red Cross, the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, and the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, as well as as many eyewitness testimonies of survivors as possible. Research was also carried out into the existing literature.

The new research concluded that it was unlikely that they were still alive in March. "Seventy years later, we can state that the date of their deaths must have been in February 1945," the Anne Frank Foundation stated.

According to the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), most typhus-related deaths occurred around twelve days after the first symptoms of the disease appeared.

"Because witnesses already recognized the symptoms in Anne and Margot before Feb. 7, and because they were already in a weakened state when they arrived at Bergen-Belsen, it is unlikely that they survived until the end of March," Anne Frank House stated. "In view of this, the date of their death is more likely to be some time in February." Endit