That day in 1945 is one of several pivotal moments in Oppenheimer's life described by the historians Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin in their 2005 biography American Prometheus, which provided the basis for the new movie biopic Oppenheimer, released 21 July in the US. He'd slept only four hours that night, kept awake by anxiety and his smoker's cough. At 5ft 10in (178cm), this made him extremely thin. He was always slender, but after three years as director of "Project Y", the scientific arm of the "Manhattan Engineer District" that had designed and built the bomb, his weight had dropped to just over 52kg (115lbs). Oppenheimer was a picture of nervous exhaustion. Around 10km (6 miles) away, the world's first atomic bomb test, codenamed "Trinity", was set to proceed in the pale sands of the Jornada del Muerto desert, in New Mexico. They hoped for the return of the eight people from the Secret Annex.It was the early hours of 16 July 1945, and Robert Oppenheimer was waiting in a control bunker for a moment that would change the world. Miep and the other helpers kept the business running. But it didn’t work.įortunately, there was a glimmer of light: to the great relief of those left behind on the Prinsengracht, Johannes Kleiman was released after just a few weeks. She took a big risk and walked into the headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst. Miep and Bep gathered everything up and Miep decided to keep the papers in a desk drawer, hoping one day to be able to return them to Anne.Īfter the arrest Miep made a last desperate attempt to free the people who had been arrested. When Miep and Bep later went to the Secret Annex to see if they could save some personal belongings of the people in hiding, they found Anne's notebooks and papers on the floor. They arrested the eight people in hiding, as well as their helpers Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler. But then, on Friday morning 4 August 1944, Dutch police officers, headed by SS-Hauptscharführer Karl Josef Silberbauer, unexpectedly raided Prinsengracht 263.
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