You’ve probably heard of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who famously recorded her experiences hiding from the Nazis. What you may not have heard is that she was one of the refugees the United States callously turned away in the early 1940’s. In February, Reuters reported that letters had been discovered showing that Frank’s father, Otto, was seeking help and money to procure a U.S. visa to flee Adolf Hitler.

Frank asked a former classmate in New York, Nathan Strauss, who owned Macy’s department store, for $5,000 as he attempted to flee Holland with his wife, mother-in-law, and daughters Anne and Margo. “This is the first concrete evidence that he did actually pursue the possibility of escape from Holland,” New York University professor David Engel said when the letters were released by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

The letters, telegrams, and government documents reveal that Frank attempted to get into the United States in 1941, a year before the family went into hiding. In a letter to Strauss, Otto Frank wrote:

“It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our own fate is of less importance. You are the only person I know that I can ask.”

Ultimately, the $5,000 was not needed because the “sake of the children” was not a matter of importance to the United States Government, who denied the visa. Strauss, now deceased, and his wife made several attempts to appeal the decision, even enlisting the aid of others, but to no avail. Anne Frank died in 1945 in a German concentration camp. But American University professor Richard Breitman says it didn’t have to be that way...

More: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/11/18/anne-frank-literally-died-because-of-americas-anti-refugee-stance/