The family of famed Jewish diarist Anne Frank was thwarted in their efforts to emigrate to the United States by restrictive immigration policies and other war-time obstacles, according to research released on Friday.
"Jews seeking to escape Nazi persecution in Europe had to go through a protracted emigration procedure. There was limited willingness to accept Jewish refugees," according to the report from the Anne Frank House and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.The research - released exactly 76 years after Otto Frank, his wife and two daughters were forced to go into hiding in Amsterdam – shows the family's visa application first had to be resubmitted due to the bombardment of the US Consulate in Rotterdam, and was later denied.
A subsequent plan to enter the US via Cuba was rendered impossible after the attack on Pearl Harbour and the suspension of transatlantic shipping traffic.
Anne Frank died of disease in a Nazi death camp in 1945, the year the war ended. Her father, the only family member to survive the Holocaust, published her diary in 1947. Today it is one of the most-read books in the world.