(upbeat music) (camera shuttering) (slow somber music) - [Narrator 1] 13 miles northwest of Burlington, Iowa sits a small rural town called Danville.

The population at the turn of the century was barely 200 people.

Into this small village, when public education was in its infancy, came an 18-year-old woman named Birdie Matthews.

She began her teaching career in a one-room schoolhouse.

She was different than most young educators, because she had traveled.

She had taken additional teaching courses during her summer breaks, including a course on Modern Trends in Classroom Practices from Columbia University in New York City, and by 1914, she had visited much of Europe.

Her letters home became front page news, and her experiences while traveling became lesson plans.

She would send postcards to her students in order to open their eyes to the wonders of a world beyond their rural perspective.

In the summer of 1939, Ms. Birdie, as she was affectionately known, spent her vacation in Europe.

There she met teachers from the 6th Montessori school in Amsterdam, who gave her the names of children as potential pen pals for her students.

As the new school year began, Ms. Birdie initiated her international correspondence program offering her class the opportunity to become pen pals with other students.

10-year-old Juanita Wagner drew the name of a pen pal from overseas, knowing nothing other than the girl's name and address.

Juanita wrote about Iowa, her mother, and her sister, Betty, and about life on a farm.

(slow somber music) It was addressed to a young girl who lived in Amsterdam, her name, Anne Frank.

It took a while, but the following month, two letters arrived at Wagner's rural post box.

One letter was addressed to Juanita from Anne, the second to Juanita's sister, Betty, from Anne's sister, Margot.

The letters were written in English though it's likely that they were composed in Dutch, and then translated by the girl's father, Otto.

Anne did not talk about the political situation in her country.

Instead, she wrote about her family, school, how she found Burlington on the world map, and about her hobby of collecting postcards, proudly stating that she had over 800.

She also enclosed a photo of herself.

Margot, however, did write about the political situation, which at the time was mostly unfamiliar to American students.

Adolf Hitler had invaded Poland, and on September 3rd, Britain and France had declared war on Germany.

Margot wrote that they could not leave Amsterdam safely as they could not travel through Germany, Belgium, or France.

On May 10th, 1940, 11 days after Anne's letter arrived in Danville, the Dutch surrendered and neutral Holland was occupied by Nazi Germany, entering Amsterdam near the city where Anne and Margot lived with their mother and father.

- [Narrator 2] On May the 10th, 1940, without a declaration of war, Germany struck against neutral Holland.

Paratroopers and Panzers overpowered the Dutch peacetime army with its obsolete weapons.

- [Narrator 1] They felt unsafe in their home country, but they were unable to relocate with relatives in Switzerland, because no visas were awarded.

During the time of war (truck engine roaring) - [Narrator 3] Germany imposed a new administration headed by a Reich Commissioner personally responsible to Hitler, and a power to rule by decree.

He tried to reassure the Dutch by declaring that Nazi ideology would not be imposed.

Germany had no imperialistic designs on Holland.

As a conciliatory gesture, Hitler ordered the release of all Dutch prisoners of war.

People started to relax.

The Germans promised to maintain living standards and to cure unemployment.

The occupation might not be so bad after all (uptempo cheery music) (children giggling) - [Narrator 1] The Wagner sisters wrote back immediately, waiting anxiously for a reply from Amsterdam.

None came.

A few days later the Daily Hawk-Eye Gazette printed a war map of Holland.

Ms. Birdie explained to her students that communication with Holland had been cut off.

The effects of World War II were escalating, even impacting life in rural Iowa.

In November, 1940, a war munitions plant for US Allies was built near Middletown, Iowa, causing many families to give up their homes and land, leaving behind churches, schools, and cemeteries that had been established since the mid-1800s.

(slow somber music) In Amsterdam, soldiers now roamed the streets, Jewish children were only allowed to attend Jewish schools.

Soon the Third Reich began to implement stricter control, and within weeks, German troops occupied Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, and France.

(tense dramatic music) By December, 1941, Jews were banned from movie theaters, forbidden access to public transportation.

A curfew was implemented, and all Jews were forced to wear a yellow star, and carry identification cards.

Jews were forbidden to own their own businesses.

In Danville, the Wagner sisters were unaware that their new friends were Jewish.

And then on December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the United States entered World War II.

By June the following year, Nazi officials began to deport Jews from occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

The next day, on June 12th, 1942, on her 13th birthday, Anne received her first diary.

(uptempo cheery music) The following month, Margot received papers to report to a German work camp.

This prompted the Frank family to stage a hoax pretending that they had escaped to Switzerland.

They left, leaving behind personal items, food, dirty dishes on the table in the hope that no one would know that they had gone into hiding behind a secret bookcase in the upper level of Mr. Frank's business.

His secretary, Miep Gies, helped to hide the Franks who were joined by the van Pels family, and later by Miep's dentist, a man named Fritz Pfeffer.

In the diary, Anne gives him the unkind pseudonym, Albert Dussel.

(uptempo cheery music) This is where they hid for nearly two years.

(tense dramatic music) (footsteps thudding) (slow somber music) After the war, Miep Gies gave Otto the diaries, notebooks, and papers she found in the annex after the arrest.

In summer 1945, Otto began translating Anne's writing from Dutch to German for his mother who lived in Switzerland.

When he finished, he was encouraged that the diaries should be published as an important firsthand account of those who had suffered persecution under the Nazis.

Interestingly, while in hiding, Anne heard a radio broadcast requesting letters and diaries detailing wartime experiences.

And in May, 1944, Anne herself began to rework portions of her diary for publication.

Otto Frank's transcription made the publication of Anne's Diary a reality fulfilling her wish when it was first published in 1947 in the Netherlands, and then in America in 1952.

In August, 1945, Betty Wagner, now a teacher herself in Milan, Illinois, wrote once again to Anne and Margot at the Amsterdam address.

Otto Frank received the letter, and responded, describing the painful loss of his wife and daughters.

It was only then that Betty became aware that the Franks were Jewish.

It is said that the letter to Betty was one of the most difficult things he had ever written.

The following day, she shared the letter with her students.

Years would go by, and in 1956, Betty hears the diary has been turned into a Broadway play.

She orders a copy and recognizes the cover photo as the same girl.

In a shoebox filled with mementos, she found the letters that briefly united four young girls so long ago.

- We didn't have television, sometimes we didn't even have radio, and a little weekly newspaper that was not very worldly minded.

So to write to somebody overseas was a great thing to do.

And I can remember how excited we were.

I took those letters and saved them.

I'm a pack rat, so I save everything.

Why I saved it, well, I loved having that letter from overseas with that foreign stamp.

It just, I can't explain it to you.

When you're in the country, and you don't know a lot of things, you learn by experience, and I kept it.

After I graduated from high school, we moved many times, apartment to apartment to apartment.

But I kept the letter, why?

I call it the providence of God.

It's just I did it.

And so that's how come we have it today.

- [Narrator 1] In the 1980s, Betty showed the letter to a friend who tells her it is too valuable to be kept stored in a shoebox.

- I called Juanita, she lived in Redlands, and I said, "Nita, how would you feel if we were to sell the Anne Frank Letters at auction?"

Well, she said that was okay with her, because she has two boys, and they were not really that interested.

In fact, since then I've learned that they thought that Anne Frank was someone we grew up with, and they had no idea who she really was.

So I said, "Well, I think maybe we'll try to see what we can do."

- [Narrator 1] And on October 25th, 1988, the Swann Galleries in New York City auctioned the letters to an anonymous bidder for $165,000.

They were then donated to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles where they remain today.

(slow somber music) Ms. Birdie retired the year after the war ended.

She traveled, gardened, and like Anne, was a prolific writer.

She died in 1974 at the age of 94.

The Wagner sisters moved to California.

Juanita died in 2001, and Betty in 2012.

In Danville, the community came together, and converted an old lumberyard once owned by museum director, Janet Hesler's father and uncle into the Danville Station Library and Museum.

The museum and library also serve as a community center where visitors and townspeople will find a collection of books about Anne Frank, including her diary, exhibits on World War II, the Holocaust and the Frank Family.

The museum is the only location that the Wiesenthal Center allows copies of the letters to be displayed.

(slow somber music)