Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Anne Frank’s Family Was Not Rejected By U.S. — Their Visa Request Was Never Processed

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Contrary to widely-held beliefs, Anne Frank and her family were never denied an entry visa to the United States, a new study by the museum for the Jewish diarist confirmed.

The museum in Amsterdam known as the Anne Frank House published Friday its report on the immigration attempts of the family of Anne Frank, who penned journals of her time in hiding from Nazi occupation for two years until 1944. The journals became the world-famous “Diary of a Young Girl.” She, her sister and parents were sent to concentration camps where only her father, Otto Frank, survived.

“Although the United States had a far from generous policy with regard to Jewish refugees, it is clear that Otto, Edith, Margot and Anne Frank were not refused entry to the United States,” the new study states. Due to rapidly-changing circumstances connected to World War II, the family’s “immigration visa application to the American consulate in Rotterdam was never processed.”

The finding follows decades of uncertainty as to how exactly U.S. immigration authorities handled the Franks’ immigration applications.

According to the study, one delay to the Franks immigration process followed the closing of the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam in May 1940. All documents, including his visa application, were lost and had to be resubmitted.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.