Anne Frank: The Biography - Hardcover

Hush. Be quiet. Whisper. Walk softly ... take off your shoes. Who's still in the bathroom? The water's running. For God's sake, don't flush the toilet! After two years you should know better than to be so careless. Empty the chamber pots. Shove the beds back out of the way. The church bells are already ringing the half hour. When the workers arrive at 8:30, there has to be dead silence.

The usual morning ritual in the secret annex. At 6:45 the alarm clock goes off in Hermann and Auguste van Pels's room, so loud and shrill that it wakes the Franks and Fritz Pfeffer, who sleep one floor below. The sounds that come next are maddeningly familiar. A well-aimed blow from Mrs. van Pels silences the alarm. The floor creaks, softly at first, then louder. Mr. van Pels gets up, creeps down the steep stairs, and, the first in the bathroom, hurries to finish.

Anne waits in bed until she hears the bathroom door creak again. Her roommate, Fritz Pfeffer, is next. Anne sighs, relieved, enjoying these few precious moments of solitude. With eyes closed, she listens to the birdsong in the backyard and stretches inher bed. Bed is hardly the word for the narrow sofa she has lengthened by putting a chair at one end. But Anne thinks it's luxurious. Miep Gies, who brings the Franks their groceries, has told her that others in hiding are sleeping on the floor in tiny windowless sheds or in damp cellars. Dutifully, Anne gets up and opens the blackout curtains. Discipline rules their lives here. She glances at the world outside. The foggy Friday morning promises to turn into a gloriously warm summer day. If she could just, only for a few minutes ... But she must be patient. It won't be much longer now. The attempt to assassinate Hitler two weeks ago has revived everyone's hopes ... Perhaps she can go back to school in the fall. Her father and Mr. van Pels are sure that everything will be over in October, that they will be free ... It is already August. August 4, 1944.

An hour and forty-five minutes is all they have to prepare for another day. An hour and forty-five minutes passes quickly when eight people have to wash up, store their bedding, push the beds aside, and put tables and chairs back where they belong. After work begins at 8:30 in the warehouse below, they can't make a sound. It would be easy to give themselves away. The warehouse foreman, Willem van Maaren, is suspicious enough as it is.

Before a light breakfast at nine, they occupy themselves as quietly as possible, reading or studying, sewing or knitting. And they wait. They must be especially careful during this next half hour. Anyone who absolutely has to get up tiptoes across the room like a thief, in stocking feet or soft slippers, and they have to whisper. If someone laughs or pricks a finger and says "ouch!" everyone glares. But once the office staff has arrived and the rattling typewriters, the ringing telephone, and the voices of Miep Gies, Bep Voskuijl, and Johannes Kleiman--all friends and helpers of the residents in the secret annex--form a backdrop of sound, thedanger is diminished somewhat. Eventually Miep will come to pick up the "shopping list." In fact, Miep will have to settle for whatever she can get them, and every day she gets a little less. But she knows how eagerly the inhabitants of the secret annex await her. Anne barrages Miep with questions, as she does every morning. And Miep, as she does every morning, puts Anne off until later. Only after Miep has sworn to return for a longer visit in the afternoon will Anne let her go back to her office. Otto Frank retires with Peter van Pels to Peter's tiny room on the top floor. A dictation in English is the lesson plan for today. Peter is having trouble with this irritating language, so Otto spends his mornings helping him. It's a way to pass time. On the floor below, Anne and her sister, Margot, lose themselves in their books. Patience. Patience and discipline--those are the things that mercurial Anne has had to learn these last two years.

In the warehouse, on the ground floor, the spice mill is running with its familiar monotonous clatter. Van Maaren has the door onto Prinsengracht wide open to let in the light and warmth of this soft summer day.

Ten-thirty. The two warehouse workers have a lot of work to do before the noon break. Suddenly a group of men appears in the shop, one of them in the uniform of the German security service, the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD. The men are armed. A few words are exchanged, then van Maaren--totally astonished--points toward the stairs with his thumb. Another worker, Lammert Hartog, stands nervously to one side. The visitors hurry up the stairs to the offices on the second floor. One stays behind to guard the door.

Without knocking, one of the men, short and horribly fat, enters the office shared by Miep, Bep, and Mr. Kleiman. Miep doesn't even look up; people often walk into the office unannounced. Only when she hears his harsh command, "Sit still andnot a word out of you!" does she raise her head and find herself staring into the barrel of a pistol. "Don't move from your seat," he orders in Dutch.

Gruff voices can be heard through the double folding doors. The SD man and three of the others, all Dutch, have surprised Victor Kugler at his desk in the next room. "Who owns this building?" the uniformed man bellows at him in German. Kugler, who grew up in Austria, responds in German, "Mr. Piron. We just rent from him." Stiffly erect in his chair, he quickly gives the address of the Dutchman who has owned the building at 263 Prinsengracht since April 1943.

"Stop playing games with me," the SD man snarls. His name is Karl Josef Silberbauer. "Who's the boss here? That's what I want to know."

"I am," Kugler says.

What do these men want? Kugler, a reserved and formal man who strikes many people as utterly unapproachable, tries to collect his thoughts. Have they come after him? Or do they know about the people in the secret annex? Has someone betrayed them? Everything has gone smoothly for two years and a month. Impossible that now, of all times, when the Allies have finally made a breakthrough in northern France and are on the advance, that now, with liberation only weeks away, now, when the tide has finally turned ...

A few seconds pass, then his hopes fade. These men know. Denial will only make matters worse.

"You have Jews hidden in this building." Silberbauer's words have the grim sound of a verdict with no possibility of appeal. There is no way out.

Silberbauer is in a hurry; he's on duty. This is merely routine. He orders Kugler to lead the way.

Kugler obeys. What else can he do? The men follow him, theirpistols drawn. Kugler's brilliant blue eyes seem--more than ever--like an impenetrable wall. But his perfect self-control conceals a feeling of paralyzing helplessness. His mind won't work; his familiar surroundings blur and fade before his eyes. It feels like the final moments before a thunderstorm, muggy, oppressive, threatening. Questions torment him: Who betrayed his charges? A neighbor? An employee? And why today of all days?

Seemingly indifferent, he walks down the corridor that connects the front of the building with the rooms in the rear. One by one he climbs the narrow steps that turn to the right like a circular staircase. The strangers are at his heels. Silberbauer still hasn't gotten used to Amsterdam's terrifyingly steep stairs. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Now they are standing in a hallway whose beige-and-red flowered wallpaper makes it look even narrower than it is. Behind them is the doorway to the spice warehouse, ahead of them a high bookcase: three shelves crammed with worn gray file folders. Above the bookcase hangs a large map of...