The fate of the men
Otto Frank, Fritz Pfeffer and Hermann and Peter van Pels manage to stay together. Most prisoners have to perform heavy labor digging trenches. Peter is luckier: he is assigned to the camp post office. Guards and non-Jews may receive mail. Because Peter handles the packages that arrive, he is sometimes able to “arrange” a bit of extra food.
Otto returns
He hopes Anne and Margot might still be alive.
More
Hermann van Pels
Everyday there are selections: prisoners who are too sick or weak to work are sent directly to the gas chamber to be killed. It is a few weeks after their arrival and Hermann van Pels, exhausted, is no longer capable of working. He is then gassed as well. Otto Frank and Peter van Pels witness this: “I will never forget that moment when the 17-year-old Peter van Pels and I saw a group of selected men. Peter’s father was among the group. They were marched away. Two hours later a cart with their clothes on it went by.”
Fritz Pfeffer
Fritz Pfeffer is deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp in October 1944. Thousands of prisoners die there from a combination of heavy labor, lack of food and poor sanitary conditions. Fritz Pfeffer is among them. He dies in the sick-bay barracks on December 20, 1944, at the age of fifty-five.
Neuengamme
Prisoners doing hard labor.
Peter van Pels
Shortly before his release, the Nazis evacuate the camp. Prisoners who can still walk must go with them. Peter van Pels is among these prisoners. He arrives at the Mathausen concentration camp in Austria at the end of Janaury. The prisoners have to perform heavy labor. Peter van Pels dies of exhaustion on May 5, 1945.
Liberated prisoners in Mauthausen.
Otto survives
On January 27, 1945, Russian soldiers liberate Auschwitz. Otto Frank is one of the 7650 prisoners who are still alive. He weighs less than 115 pounds, while he weighed over 150 pounds in the Secret Annex. Otto particularly remembers the snow-white uniforms the Russian soldiers were wearing and he later says: “They were good men. We didn't care that they were Communists. We weren't concerned about their politics, we were interested in being liberated."