Letters of Anne Frank's Father Uncovered [audio 4min]

A year and a half ago, Estelle Guzik was indexing some 100,000 Holocaust documents in the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York when she stumbled across something remarkable. Amongst the files were the undiscovered letters of Otto Frank, the father of famed diarist and Holocaust victim, Anne Frank. The documents had been moved there more than 30 years before from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. While indexing, she noticed one of the birth dates was missing from a file. "Estelle Guzik reopened the file to locate the birth date and then immediately came upon the names of Anne and Margot Frank," says Dr. Carl Reins, Executive Director of YIVO. Due to a clerical error, Guzik rediscovered the letters that illuminate Frank's failure to get his family out of Nazi-occupied Holland. After the files were found, they were embargoed until issues of privacy, copyright and provenance could be determined. Since the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society documents came from so many different agencies, it may be impossible to locate the source of the Otto Frank file. Webpage includes extended report by Margot Adler, photos, transcripts of letters.