The Book Of Yesterday | May 12
AMERICAN GOVERNOR GENERAL WILLIAM CAMERON FORBES WARNS ON GRANTING FREEDOM TO THE PHILIPPINES
May 12, 1932
A warning was issued by the former United States ambassador to Japan and former Governor-General to the Philippines William Cameron Forbes on this day in 1932 regarding America's granting of independence to our country. At that time, the granting of Philippine independence was pending in the American Congress. In front of a gathering in Boston, Massachusetts Forbes announced his opposition to it, saying that giving America more freedom in our country of press, organizing, worship and choice would only result in the rise of the oligarchy. of religion, and choice of employment.
It was 1921 when President Warren G. Harding sent William Forbes and Leonard Wood to head the Wood-Forbes Commission, which aimed to investigate the condition of our country under their occupation. Their long period of observation showed that our country is not yet fully ready to lead ourselves as an independent nation.
ANNE FRANK'S FATHER OTTO FRANK WAS BORN
May 12, 1889
Today is the 132nd birthday of the home column and the only surviving member of the German-Jewish family Frank of Germany and good father of diarist Annelis Marie Frank Otto Heinrich Frank. He was born on this day in 1889 in the city of Frankfurt am Main, Germany and the second of four children of the German-Jewish family in that city Alice Stern and Michael Frank.
After taking an economics course in Heidelberg, Germany he moved to the United States to work at Macy’s Department Store in New York, owned by American-based German-Jewish businessman Isidor Strauss. He returned to Germany after the death of his father in 1909 and returned to his workplace in America until 1911.
When the first World War broke out he enlisted in the German army in 1915 and was promoted to Lieutenant in 1917 until the end of the war in 1918. After that Otto managed the bank formerly owned by his father until it was closed due to the crisis. economic in Germany in 1930. He married the daughter of a wealthy Jewish businesswoman Edith Hollander in 1925 and was blessed with two children-Margot who was born in 1926 and Annelis Marie in 1929.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 the Frank family was forced to flee to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where Otto set up a market for ingredients and spices. The Nazis once again disrupted Otto's family life when Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940 and in order to keep his business alive he let his Dutch friends run it. The Frank family tried to flee to America, but his passport was canceled when America declared war on Germany in December 1941. This is where the Frank family's two -year hideout from the Nazis began, when they chose to hide in the secret annex above. of the building where Otto's business is located. They also hid there with the Dutch Jewish family Hermann, Augusta and Peter van Pels and another Jewish friend Fritz Pfeffer. They were helped hide by Dutch friends working in Otto’s business Miep Gies, Viktor Kugler, Bep Voskuijl and Johannes Kleiman. Frank, van Pels and Pfeffer were arrested by the Gestapo on August 4, 1944.
From Amsterdam, the Frank and Van Pels family were taken to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, where Otto’s wife Edith, and husband and wife Hermann and Augusta van Pels died in gas chambers. Otto was left in Auschwitz while his children Anne and Margot were taken away from Bergen-Belsen, where they died. Otto was among the prisoners released by the Soviets at Auschwitz in January 1945, and returned to the Netherlands in May of the same year, when he learned that he was the only one left alive among those hiding in the secret annex. She also recovered from Miep Gies the personal belongings of her children that they had hidden, including Anne’s diary. After Otto edited the contents of his son's diary he published it in 1947 as a book entitled "The Secret Annex" and made an English translation entitled "Diary of A Young Girl" in 1952. It was became one of the important first-hand documents describing the Holocaust. Otto remarried his fellow Auschwitz survivor Elfreide Geiringer in 1953, and he collaborated with her in the campaign to make the story of his family and his son known during the Holocaust. He also campaigned for the preservation of the very building they hid, and later became a museum and Holocaust Memorial Site.
Otto Frank died of lung cancer at the age of 91 on August 19, 1980 in Switzerland.
PRESIDENT DIOSDADO MACAPAGAL MOVES INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATION TO 12TH JUNE
May 12, 1962
At the age of 93, former President Emilio Aguinaldo reached the shift in the date of the Philippine independence celebration, when former President Diosdado Macapagal signed Presidential Proclamation no. 57. This proclamation moves the date of the independence day of our country from the 12th of June to the 4th of July.
The following month, our country's Independence Day was celebrated for the first time in 1962 on June 12, where former President Aguinaldo was the guest of honor at its celebration in Luneta. He was still carrying the very flag he waved on the balcony of his home in Kawit, Cavite, 64 years ago that day. Former President Aguinaldo passed away in Quezon City on February 6, 1964.
And by virtue of Republic Act no. 4166 which was also signed by President Macapagal on August 4, 1964 formally set June 12 as the date for the celebration of Philippine Independence Day.
Since 1946, our country's Independence Day has been celebrated every 4th of July in conjunction with the celebration of the birth of the third Republic of the Philippines.
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