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At approximately 10 am, August 4, 1944, the Frank family's greatest fear came true. A Nazi policeman and several Dutch collaborators appeared at 263 Prinsengracht, having received an anonymous phone call about Jews hiding there, and headed straight for the bookcase leading to the Secret Annex.
Karl Joseph Silberbauer, an Austrian Nazi, forced the residents to turn over all valuables. When he found out that Otto Frank had been a lieutenant in the German Army during World War I, he was a little less hostile. The residents were taken from the house, forced into a covered truck, taken to the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, and then to Weteringschans Prison.

Two of the helpers, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman, were also imprisoned for their role in hiding the family. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were not arrested, although Miep was brought in for questioning by the police.

On August 8, 1944, after a brief stay in Weteringschans Prison, the residents of the Secret Annex were moved to Westerbork transit camp. They remained there for nearly a month, until September 3, when they were transported to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. It was the last Auschwitz-bound transport ever to leave Westerbork.

In October 1944, Anne and Margot were transported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Thousands died from planned starvation and epidemics at Bergen-Belsen, which was without food, heat, medicine, or elementary sanitary conditions.

Otto Frank was the only one to survive the Holocaust out of those in hiding in the secret annex. After the war Otto found it hard to live in Amsterdam because it reminded him of his dead wife and daughters.

He and his second wife, Elfried Geiringer, also an Auschwitz survivor, moved to Basel, Switzerland, in 1953. Otto Frank died on August 19, 1980, at the age of ninety-one.