Governor Deal visits the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

This July, Governor Nathan Deal and Mrs. Deal were guests at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. During a recent business mission, Governor Deal visited the cities of Zurich, Basel, Bern, and Amsterdam.

Governor Deal and his delegation met with high-level government ministers and business leaders to explore business opportunities. The Netherlands ranks fourth among European investors in Georgia. Dutch companies have established more than 250 facilities in Georgia, representing 27,900 jobs and $2.5 billion in investment.

In September, 1933, Otto Frank left his hometown of Frankfurt, Germany, to set up a new business in Amsterdam. His wife, Edith, and daughters, Anne and Margot, joined him later. At the time, Amsterdam was the Netherlands' largest city and had a Jewish population of about 75,000. That number increased to over 79,000 in 1941. Jews represented less than 10% of the city's total population. More than 10,000 were foreign Jews who had found refuge in Amsterdam in the 1930s, especially after the Nazis' rise to power in 1933.

In 1938, Otto started a second company in partnership with Hermann van Pels, a Jewish German who had also fled from Germany with this family. Both businesses eventually moved to a building on Prisengracht 263.

The Frank family, van Pels family, and Fritz Pfeffer hid in a secret apartment above and behind the businesses for nearly two years before being discovered and arrested in August of 1944. The building is now a museum.

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• Anne Frank