Anne Frank Was A Refugee, Too | HuffPost Latest News

Millions of people have read Anne Franks diary to understand the horrors of the Holocaust. But the fate of Frank and her family is also a disturbing reminder of what can happen when the U.S. turns its back on refugees .

On Friday, people around the world commemorated International Holocaust Memorial Day, including President Donald Trump , who then rolled out drastic plans aimed at restricting refugees.

A number of Jewish organizations have spoken out against Trumps actions the parallels between the experience of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe during the Holocaust and Syrian refugees today are hard to miss.

History will look back on this as a sad week in US in which @POTUS turned his back on people fleeing for their lives:https://t.co/eh2AyI65X4 pic.twitter.com/S1JUi9S2K4

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History will look back on this as a sad week in US in which @POTUS turned his back on people fleeing for their lives:https://t.co/eh2AyI65X4 pic.twitter.com/S1JUi9S2K4
ADL (@ADL_National) January 27, 2017

While Frank, a German refugee who died in a Nazi death camp at age 16, is now widely idolized, Americans at the time may have viewed her with the same indifference they currently feel toward refugees from Syria and elsewhere.

Frank was a teen when she wrote her now-famous diary, an evocative chronicle of the years her family spent hiding from Nazis in Amsterdam. They were eventually discovered and sent to death camps. She, her sister and her mother all died.

Her father, Otto Frank, survived, and later published his daughters writings. For decades, teachers have used Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl to teach the value of tolerance and the dangers of hate.

Franks life could have turned out much differently. In 2005, historians discovered a trove of documents showing Otto Franks desperate attempts to gain asylum in the U.S. Over several months in 1941, he wrote letters asking a prominent American friend and a couple of relatives to help get visas for him and his family.

It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for, he wrote in one letter . Our own fate is of less importance.