Anne Frank one of the "Greatest Dutchmen"?

Anne Frank was a Jewish girl born in Germany and educated in the Netherlands, who became an icon after her death. As many young people of her age, she wrote a diary. The diary called "The diary of a young girl", describes the hardship of the Jews in the Netherlands during the Holocaust from her point of view.

Anna died just before the end of WWII in Bergen Belsen concentration camp.

After the war her father Otto, who survived the Holocaust, published this diary, which was translated into dozens of languages.

Anne and her family lost their German nationality in 1933, because of the anti-Semitic Nazi laws and they became stateless. Most people who know her story, think she was a Dutch girl, but as a matter of fact she never became Dutch.

Ironically she was nominated as the eighth on the list of the "Greatest Dutchmen". After WWII the Germans returned the German nationality to the Jews, who lost it under the Nazi regime.

The Dutch were not so generous.

Both my parents who were active members in the Dutch Resistance in Holland during WWII had the Polish nationality and had to wait till 1953 to become Dutch. My father had to report himself every month or so to the Dutch police being a foreigner.

My mother was afraid that we would be sent back to communist Poland and it caused her many sleepless nights.

It didn't bother the Dutch that my parents could have been killed in the Resistance or in a concentration camp, but the law must be kept strictly, specially for the Jews.

About 10 years later I became Israeli and so are my wife and kids.

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