Anne Frank’s family could not escape to US during Holocaust due to immigration roadblocks, new research reveals

The family of the famous diarist attempted to migrate to the US several times, as well as Cuba, before going into hiding

Anne Frank’s family ran into numerous roadblocks and exhaustive immigration procedures which prevented them from migrating to the US and Cuba during the Holocaust, newly-discovered records reveal.

Otto Frank, the father of the globally renowned writer and diarist, initially applied for visas to the US in 1938, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the US Holocaust Museum said in a statement on Friday.

On July 6, 1942, nearly four years after the family reportedly began its immigration process, the Franks went into hiding.

“I am forced to look out for emigration and as far as I can see USA is the only country we could go to,” Mr Frank wrote to a friend in the US in 1941, a year prior to moving his family inside the upstairs attic of a close friend in Amsterdam.

According to his letters, Mr Otto was unsuccessful in having his paperwork processed by the American consulate in Germany because “all the papers have been destroyed there”.

The office was bombarded by German Nazis on May 14, 1940, destroying a list of possible visas and other crucial documents for those seeking a way out of the country.

Mr Frank continued in his attempts to relocate the family in 1941, applying for visas once again in the US, as well as Cuba. However, since the Nazis had shut down virtually all of the American consulates across German-occupied Europe, records reveal those documents were likely never sent through.

The US was only offering 30,000 visas annually from 1939 to 1942, as hundreds of thousands of Europeans were applying to migrate to the country. The process took several years and required numerous affidavits from US citizens.

Immigration procedures in the US also featured additional stringent requirements, including tax clearances and original birth and wedding certificates. Despite having all of the necessary information compiled, countless immigrants were still denied entry.

In a statement, Annemarie Bekker from the Anne Frank House said the Franks’ “efforts were thwarted by American bureaucracy, war and time”.

“All their attempts failed, so going into hiding was their last attempt trying to get out of the hands of the Nazis,” she continued.

Mr Frank was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust after his was family was discovered in hiding and sent to Auschwitz. His daughters died at the Bergen-Belsen camp shortly before the war ended.

Before now, the family’s attempts to migrate to the US and Cuba were not publicly known. Historians gathered information on their visa applications through an extensive paper trail that included looking at their affidavits of supports and other information provided to US authorities, the Associated Press reported.

The latest discovery appeared to confirm Mr. Frank had been seeking refugee status in the US and Cuba, which was originally reported in 2007 based on letters the father sent his friend in the US. Those reports did not include Mr Frank’s attempts before 1941, which revealed he had began attempting to flee the country during the height of the Nazi takeover across Germany and Austria.