The escape of the Anne Frank family in the United States thwarted by war and bureaucracy, according to research

Long before the German Jewish businessman Otto Frank was known around the world as the father of the acclaimed writer of the Anne Frank Holocaust, he was just another refugee desperately seeking safety for his family in America.

A new report from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington documents two unsuccessful attempts by Otto Frank to obtain US visas for his family. Without them, the Franks remained in the Netherlands occupied by the Nazis, where they were all eventually arrested – including Anne, the aspiring writer, who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

The report was published by both organizations Friday, exactly 76 years after the Frank family hid in Amsterdam.

A USHMM spokesperson tells HuffPost that in July 1942, "it was clear that Otto's efforts to reach the United States would not succeed in avoiding genocidal policies Nazi. "

Otto Frank, a German Jew, moved his family to Amsterdam in 1933, as Nazi leaders adopted increasingly restrictive laws governing all aspects of Jewish life in Germany

Gertjan Broek, Researcher at Anne Frank House. Rebecca Erbelding of the USHMM wrote in her report that Otto Frank began looking for ways to escape the United States as early as 1938.

At the time, the states United States did not have a specific refugee policy. The government imposed strict national quotas, limiting the number of people from each country who could immigrate to the United States per year. People fleeing the persecution faced the same bureaucratic hurdles as all other immigrants, such as obtaining birth and marriage certificates, affidavits of support from family members in the United States, medical records, letters from the United States. 39, employers and tax documents.

required to collect exit visas from their country of residence. In 1941, the Nazis robbed German Jews living outside their nationality, which meant that those who had fled to other countries – like the Franks – had become stateless.

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish organization that helps to resettle refugees, There are parallels between the policies that have prevented the Franks from finding refuge in the United States and the immigration policies adopted by the Donald Trump administration.

Melanie Nezer, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for HIAS, drew attention to the extreme control procedures required by the White House and Trump's travel ban, which suspended the refugee resettlement program

. policies that kept people from countries occupied by Germany out of the United States from 1941, "she told HuffPost by e-mail. were not specifically targeted by these policies, the Jews were particularly affected. "

After the outbreak of the Second World War, the US government became increasingly concerned about the possibility of spies and saboteurs immigrating to the United States, the researchers wrote. In 1941, the State Department decided that applicants with close relatives in the countries occupied by Germany would no longer be entitled to visas. State Department officials were instructed to consider each request with greater care and dismiss any person they had doubts about.

At the same time, American citizens had a largely negative view of refugees as a whole. According to the report, a poll of public opinion conducted in May 1938 revealed that 67% of Americans surveyed said they wanted to keep Germans, Austrians and "other political refugees" out of the United States. A Gallup poll conducted in June 1940 found that 71% of respondents said they believed that Nazi Germany had established a network of spies and saboteurs in the United States.

Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned that some Jewish refugees had been forced to spy for the Nazis.

"National security takes precedence over humanitarian concerns," wrote Broek and Erbelding

Meanwhile in Europe, the situation became dramatic for Jewish families. In November 1938, the year Otto Frank attempted to emigrate to the United States, Nazi partisans terrorized the Jews throughout the Third Reich in what was known as Kristallnacht – the Night of the Glbad breeze. Businesses and synagogues collapsed in a wave of violence.

Frank asked Nathan Straus, a wealthy American businessman and college friend, to help him immigrate to the United States. a request to the US consulate in Rotterdam in 1938. But in 1940, while the Franks were waiting for their demands to go forward, this consulate – and their application papers – were destroyed in a German bombing.

In 1941, Frank again tried to move to the United States. He told Straus that he thought America was the only place where his family could be safe.

"I am forced to seek emigration and, as far as I know, the United States is the only country where we could go," writes Frank in the April letter.

But his hopes of moving to the United States were wiped out at the end of June of the same year. After the United States ordered the closure of all German consulates in the United States, Germany ordered the closure of all US consulates in the Nazi – controlled territory, including the Netherlands. Therefore, moving the United States was no longer a viable option

The researchers found no evidence to suggest that Frank had ever been interviewed by a US consular official, which means that the family did not Was not refused.

Frank then turned his attention to Cuba, hoping to use the country as a "stepping stone" to the United States, reads the report. But this visa application was canceled in December 1941 for obscure reasons.

The Franks hid in Amsterdam on July 6, 1942, and were later joined by another Jewish family, van Pelses, and another individual. They remained in the secret annexe for over two years, during which Anne held her famous newspaper. The group was discovered on August 9, 1944 and deported to various concentration camps.

The researchers wrote that Otto Frank's efforts to flee to safety were "thwarted by American bureaucracy, war and time."

"The conclusion must be that the Frank families' attempts and van Pels have not succeeded. the growing number of candidates for a small number of openings on the quota lists; the reluctance of the President, the Department of State and Congress (or the American people) to open immigration beyond the limits set by the 1924 Quota Laws or to strive to fulfill these quotas; and, finally, the impact of the war on the possibility of escape, "wrote Broek and Erbelding in the report.

Otto Frank was the only surviving family member of the war. He published Anne's diary in 1947 and it was later translated into dozens of languages.

Nezer said in his e-mail that modern national and international refugee policies were a direct response to the problem. Holocaust and the refugee crisis created by the Second World War, with US laws and international treaties to help refugees and asylum seekers.But she said that the immigration policies of the Trump administration and the language it uses to "dehumanize" refugees make decades of progress in resettling refugees.

"Regardless of what our leaders say, Americans of faith, and partic "The Jewish Americans understand the importance of the United States as a refuge for refugees," Nezer said. "It would be a tragic mistake to go back and repeat the mistakes of the past, we are a strong country when we save people who are in danger, we become weak when we reject them and let fear win."