The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | June 2017
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discrimination by violence , indiscriminately shooting Jews in the East where over 1 million died , to gassing in death camps in occupied countries , primarily Poland . This is all chillingly well documented in the Anne Frank museum .
As I said above , the instruments of enforcement of this oppression and discrimination were , in many ways , the police forces who should have been protecting them .
First controlled by the SS under Heinrich Luitpold Himmler , a leading member of the Nazi party , a former teacher and poultry farmer from Munich . Himmler was one of the early movers and shakers under Hitler who had , by early 1936 , controlled all of the German police forces in Germany , indeed Himmler and his private guards ultimately became Hitler ' s body guards and became the instruments of oppression to institutionalise the policies in occupied Europe . Each country in Europe had a particular / different form of occupied government . Some of the occupied countries were allowed to keep some kind of local government consisting of local people ( Denmark , for example , and the Czech republic ). But here in the Netherlands , Hitler thought of the Dutch population as an extension to the Aryan race , a country to be annexed to the Third Reich . As a result of which , the Germans imposed their own government here , headed by a party bureaucrat from Austria by the name of Dr . Arthur Seyss Inquart , a Reich Commander that had control of the Netherlands throughout World War 2 ( he would be hung at Nuremberg at the end of the war ). Despite his lead , and despite the government in place in each occupied country , Heinrich Himmler put in place his own higher police officials . Here in the Netherlands he placed Johann Baptist Albin Rauter , a high-ranking Austrian-born Nazi ( later found guilty of being a war criminal and shot by the Dutch at the end of the war ). Rauter was the highest SS and Police Leader in the occupied Netherlands during the occupied period of 1940 – 1945 . It was he that institutionalised the terror policies in Amsterdam , home of Anne Frank . Unlike other occupied countries where there would be mass round-ups of the Jews , here in Amsterdam it was a little more discreet . A transit camp was established outside Amsterdam , called Westerbork , where the Jews were later transported to death camps in the east , primarily Auschwitz , sometimes Treblinka , and other camps . These were somewhat different to concentration camps , they were death camps , there would be no return for anyone . No-one ever left the death camps .
The Frank family found themselves in the Netherlands as a consequence of the Jewish ' Final solution ' commencing throughout Germany , and fear of kristallnacht . The final solution was a coded term coined by Nazi leadership , in a meeting over lunch in the margins of a conference in Berlin in 1942 , well after the idea to kill all known Jews was formulated years before .
The wider Frank family had a business opportunity , and set up two firms in Amsterdam to manufacture fruit extracts for jam and also spices for sausages , and both companies were formed in the lower level of the building now occupying the Anne Frank museum .
The group of 8 people hid for two years behind a bookcase in the ' Secret Annexe ' above the business premises , fearing to move during the working day for fear of being discovered .
After 2 years , they were found by a raid on the business premises by the equivalent of an economic crime squad , who were making inquiries into the excessive use of rations . Researchers believe that they were either betrayed by someone close , or by a staff member who may have broken onto the premises overnight and heard something afoot . Or it was simply a coincidence . No-one will ever know .
Anne Frank loved writing , so articles taken with her included a pencil and paper . She also loved to write and wanted to be a famous writer and author . She kept a note of all phrases which she
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