Van Pels family joins the Secret Annex

The Van Pels family’s arrival on July 13, 1942, transformed the Frank family’s hiding place in Otto Frank’s office building into a shared household of seven. Brought forward by the danger of German call-up notices, their entry joined two families in a precarious domestic life under occupation, where ordinary objects and routines became part of the work of concealment.

The decision to hide

After the German occupation began in May 1940, anti-Jewish decrees progressively narrowed Jewish life. Jews had to wear the yellow star, surrender bicycles, shop only during designated hours, and avoid public transport, entertainment venues, athletic facilities, and the streets at night. The rules extended into social life and schooling; as Anne recorded, her friend Jacque feared doing anything that might no longer be allowed. Hiding was thus not a sudden departure from an otherwise secure life, but a response to an accumulating system of restrictions and danger.

The Frank family had planned to enter hiding on July 16. They had been moving furniture and clothing out of their apartment for months, but Margot’s call-up notice forced them to advance the plan by ten days. Anne and her parents set out in pouring rain carrying schoolbags and shopping bags filled with belongings. The conspicuous yellow star made their situation legible to people they passed, while the hurried change of date meant the rooms at their destination would be less orderly than planned. Only during the walk did Anne’s parents gradually explain the plan to her.

The hiding place was in Otto Frank’s office building, whose ground floor included a warehouse and workrooms where cinnamon, cloves, and a pepper substitute were ground. A small circle of office staff knew that the Franks were coming: Mr. Kugler, Mr. Kleiman, Miep, and Bep Voskuijl. Bep’s father worked in the warehouse with two assistants, who were not informed. The concealed household therefore depended on a separation between those entrusted with the secret and workers who had to remain unaware.

The Van Pels family arrives

The Van Pels family reached the Annex earlier than expected. They had originally been expected on July 14, but German call-up notices were being sent out in large numbers between July 13 and 16, creating such unrest that they judged it safer to leave a day early than a day late. Their arrival followed the Frank family’s own sudden acceleration of its plans: the danger outside compressed the timetable for both families.

Peter van Pels arrived at 9:30 in the morning while the Franks were still having breakfast. Anne described him as shy and awkward and initially expected little from his company. Hermann van Pels and Auguste van Pels arrived half an hour later. The entry of the adults and their son made the hidden space a joint refuge, rather than a hiding place occupied by the Frank family alone.

The arriving family brought the familiar equipment of a household into an unfamiliar and constrained setting. Auguste carried a hatbox containing a chamber pot, which she insisted she could not feel at home without; it found a permanent place under the divan. Hermann brought a collapsible tea table under his arm. These items offered a comic first impression, but they also made visible the practical work of beginning domestic life with whatever could be carried into hiding.

A household formed under pressure

The two families ate together from the beginning. After three days, Anne wrote, the seven people felt like one big family. The change was swift: a shared meal and the first days of conversation gave the newly enlarged group a household rhythm, even though the members had arrived through fear and abrupt separation from ordinary life. Anne notes that the Van Pels family had much to report about the week the Franks had been away, including what had happened to their apartment and to Mr. Goldschmidt.

This sense of communal life did not remove the conditions that had brought them together. The building had to serve at once as a workplace, a warehouse, and a concealed refuge, and the residents’ safety depended on silence and precautions. During a later break-in, Peter noticed at seven in the morning that the warehouse and street doors stood open and alerted Pim. The residents followed standing instructions: they did not wash or run water, kept quiet, dressed by eight, and avoided going to the bathroom. The burglars had forced doors with a crowbar and stolen cashboxes, blank checkbooks, and sugar coupons for 330 pounds. The episode exposed how a threat originating in the building’s ordinary commercial spaces could place the hidden residents in immediate danger.

Concealment and its cost

Security demands continued to alter daily routines. After a later incident, Peter was assigned to patrol the house between 8:30 and 9:30, and he was no longer allowed to open his window after someone connected with the Keg company had noticed it open. The residents could not flush the toilet after 9:30 at night. Mr. Sleegers was hired as a night watchman, while a carpenter from the underground was expected to build a barricade from the white Frankfurt bedsteads. Mr. Kugler reproached the residents for carelessness, and Jan warned them not to go downstairs. Each precaution answered a concrete vulnerability, but each also tightened the limits of an already confined life.

In that setting, the family’s arrival marks both a practical enlargement of the refuge and the beginning of a shared existence shaped by collective risk. The seven became a family in their daily meals and routines, but their home remained conditional: dependent on secrecy, on the vigilance of people inside and outside the building, and on the hope that the war would end. The Annex’s domestic details—the chamber pot under the divan, the tea table, the shared breakfast—stand beside its strict rules and barricades, showing how ordinary household life persisted within, and was continually remade by, the danger of hiding.