Rare Otto Frank Archive to Be Auctioned in New York

August 14, 2012, 12:03 pm

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

An archive of documents and artifacts relating to Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank, will be auctioned off on Nov. 5 at Doyle New York, the auction house has announced.

The archive, which has an estimated price of $20,000 to $30,000, was assembled by Joseph Schildkraut, the actor who portrayed Frank in the 1955 stage and 1959 film versions of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” It includes letters and documents from 1941 detailing Otto Frank's efforts to enlist the help of the American retailer Nathan Straus, a friend from his days at Heidelberg University, in the family's effort to escape Nazi-occupied Holland. It also includes some 50 letters between Frank, Schildkraut and Schildkraut's wife, Leonor a, as well annotated vintage photographs, a transcript of a 1939 letter from Otto to Anne, and a monogrammed handkerchief given by Frank to Schildkraut, who carried it onstage.

The wartime materials, which Straus gave to Schildkraut to help him prepare for his performance, are similar to those discovered in 2007 in a New Jersey warehouse space belonging to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, according to Peter Costanzo, a director of the rare books and photographs division at Doyle.

The Frank family went into hiding in Amsterdam in July 1942. They were sent to Auschwitz in August 1944 after an informant revealed their hiding place. Otto was the only member of the family to survive, but in a 1955 letter to Schildkraut he questioned the aura of heroism that settled over him after Anne's diary became an international best seller.

“My fate, during the period of hiding and after was, when compared with other fellow sufferers, a privileged one,” he wrote. “Both through being able to stay as long as I did with my own family … also in the Concentration Camp many of my comrades suffered more than I, since I was never subjected to personal torture.”

Schildkraut's best-supporting actor Oscar, won in 1937 for his portrayal of Capt. Albert Dreyfus in “The Life of Emile Zola,” will be sold in a separate lot on Nov. 5. The award, which uses a rare early design, was the second Oscar awarded to a Jewish actor.