From Arrest to Aftermath
Diary of Anne FrankThis flow traces the final sequence from the Annex raid through deportation and the different fates of its residents.
increasing
Bearing strength in each event
decreasing
The Final Entry

Anne’s Last Recorded Reflection
Two selves
Anne’s final diary entry examines the gap between her lively public manner and a more vulnerable inner self. She describes the effort of showing one side while protecting the other.
An unfinished ending
The entry closes without resolving her inward struggle or her future plans. Its ordinary stopping point becomes poignant because the diary’s next pages were never written by Anne.
The Raid

The Hiding Place Is Found
Arrest
Security personnel arrived at the office building and arrested the residents in the Annex. Anne’s diary does not describe the event; its circumstances are recounted afterward.
A broken refuge
The arrest abruptly ended the residents’ concealed life. The people who had depended on secrecy were removed from the rooms where they had spent more than two years.
Westerbork and Auschwitz

Deportation
The transit camp
The Annex residents were held at Westerbork before being deported in the last transport from the camp to Auschwitz. Their movement followed the larger system of persecution and deportation of Dutch Jews.
Separation and danger
The journey removed them from familiar surroundings and placed them under the extreme violence of the camp system. The diary’s intimate domestic world gave way to a collective history of persecution.
Deaths in the Camps

Different Endings
The residents dispersed
The afterword records the residents’ separate routes through concentration camps. Edith Frank died in Auschwitz; Hermann van Pels, Fritz Pfeffer, and Peter van Pels also died in captivity or during forced evacuation.
Anne and Margot
Anne and Margot Frank were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where both died during the typhus epidemic. Their deaths followed months of deprivation after the arrest.
Otto’s Return

The Surviving Father
Return to Amsterdam
Otto Frank survived Auschwitz and returned to Amsterdam after liberation. He was the only one of the eight Annex residents to survive the camps.
A different responsibility
After the war, Otto devoted himself to sharing Anne’s diary and its message. His survival made publication possible, but it also placed him in the position of carrying the family’s memory.
August 1, 1944
August 4, 1944
September 3–6, 1944
Late 1944 to spring 1945
June 3, 1945