"British policy in Palestine during World War II was predicated on the White Paper, published in May 1939.
This official government document reversed Britain's long-standing support for a Jewish state and placed stringent regulations on land transfers in Palestine.
The provision of the White Paper that had the greatest impact on European Jewry was the limit placed on Jewish immigration.
"Fearful of escalating violence in Palestine, the British government capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 people over a five-year period.
After five years, further immigration was contingent on Arab approval. Although Britain paid lip-service to the notion of providing Europe's Jews with a place of refuge, it never pursued a deliberate policy that would allow such a haven to be created in the Middle East.
"During the first two years of the war, Britain barred the escape routes for Jewish refugees.
Boatloads of people fleeing Nazi persecution were refused entry into Palestine and returned to the perilous lands from which they came.
British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden was particularly adamant in his refusal to designate Palestine as a place of refuge for Jews.
At least indirectly, the British contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews."
"This is the house at 263 Prinsengracht in which Anne Frank and her family hid for about two years.
But in the end, an informer told local authorities about the Jews hiding in the house.
On August 4, 1944, the SS and Security Police arrested the eight people concealed in the house's "secret annex."
They also arrested two of the people who had been aiding them, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman.
Anne was transported to Auschwitz on September 3 and was eventually shipped to the camp at Bergen-Belsen, Germany.
She died there in the early spring of 1945, just a few weeks before the British liberated the camp."
"The staircase leading to Anne Frank's "secret annex" was hidden behind a bookcase.
Hiding Jews from the Nazis was an extremely difficult, and dangerous, undertaking, and elaborate measures often had to be taken in order to assure successful concealment."
"Of the 140,000 Jews living in Holland when that country fell to the Nazis in May 1940, 75 percent ultimately perished.
Only about 5,200 of the more than 100,000 deported to the East survived the war.
"The Jewish population of Holland also included more than 14,000 Jews from Germany who, in trying to escape the Nazis, had fled across the border.
Among them was 11-year-old Anne Frank and her family, living in Amsterdam.
The Franks, who had left Germany in 1933, suddenly found themselves trapped with the Nazi takeover of Holland.
When roundups and deportations began in 1942, the Franks went into hiding.
For two years Anne and her sister, mother, and father lived secretly in a tiny attic space they shared with four others.
They relied on non-Jewish friends, who risked their own safety to supply them with food.
"In a diary she received for her 13th birthday, Anne recorded the emotions, fears, and daily difficulties of the group's harrowing existence.
In August 1944, however, an anonymous informant revealed their location to the police.
The SS arrested all eight Jews and transported them to the Westerbork transit camp; from there the prisoners were shipped to Auschwitz.
Anne's mother, Edith, perished at Auschwitz in January 1945.
After contracting typhus, Anne and her sister, Margot, died at Bergen-Belsen in March 1945.
Her father, Otto, survived, and later published Anne's remarkable and now famous diary."
Today is the 70th anniversary of Godzina “W”, the start of the Warsaw Uprising.