Searching for Anne and Margot
Otto had already heard about Edith's death while on his way back to Amsterdam. He can’t imagine having to carry on without Anne and Margot too. He starts searching for information about his daughters.
The death of Margot and Anne
Anne and Margot die in Bergen-Belsen.
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The search for his daughters
Otto Frank does everything he can to find out what has happened to his two daughters. He places an advertisement in the newspaper and he talks to survivors who are returning from the camps. He writes to his sister on June 21: "I just can't think how I would go on without children having lost Edith already...It's too upsetting for me to write about them. Naturally I still hope, and wait, wait, wait."
The advertisement that Otto placed in the newspaper.
News of their deaths
On July 18, 1945, he meets the Brilleslijper sisters who witnessed Anne and Margot’s deaths in Bergen-Belsen. They had been at Bergen-Belsen with Anne and Margot and they tell him that his daughters are dead. It takes three days before Otto has the strength to inform his family. He sends a letter to his brother Robert and asks him to forward it to their mother.
Again and again small groups of survivors returned from different concentration camps and I tried to hear something from them about Margot and Anne. I found two sisters who had been with Margot and Anne in Bergen-Belsen. They told me about the final sufferings and the death of my children.
Otto Frank
Miep hands over Anne's diary
After Otto tells Miep about his daughters, she gives him Anne’s diary papers. For all this time, she has been keeping them in the drawer of her desk, with the hope of returning them to Anne. She says to Otto as she hands him the dairy: “Here is your daughter Anne’s legacy to you.”
Miep herself says: “I didn’t hand [Otto] Anne’s writings immediately on his arrival, as I still hoped, even though there was only a slight chance, that Anne would come back…When we heard in July 1945, that Anne, like Margot, had died in Bergen-Belsen, I gave what pieces of Anne’s writing I had back to Mr. Frank. I gave him everything I had stored in the desk drawer in my office.”