The documents show how Otto Frank, his brothers-in-law, his friends and refugee agencies tried to navigate the bewildering maze of regulations that included gathering sponsors, large sums of money and proof of how their entry would benefit America. Even the assistant secretary of state at the time, Adolf Berle, despaired of the confusion. He wrote in a letter in January 1941 that some consulates ask "for a trust fund. Others ask for affidavits. One particularly shocking case stated that nothing would be accepted save from a relative in the United States under a legal obligation to support the applicant.

"It does seem to me that this department could pull itself together sufficiently to get out a general instruction which would be complete enough and simple enough so that the procedure could be standardized."

Richard Breitman, a historian at American University, explained that after France fell to the Germans in the summer of 1940, fears grew in America that a fifth column of spies and saboteurs would be dispatched from Europe. As a State Department. memorandum dated May 2, 1941, declared: "At a time like this, when the safety of the country is imperiled, it seems fully justifiable to resolve any possible doubts in favor of the country, rather than in favor of the aliens concerned."

By June 1941, no one with close relatives still in Germany was allowed into the United States because of suspicions that the Nazis could use them to blackmail refugees into clandestine cooperation. That development ended the possibility of getting the Frank girls out through a children's rescue agency.

Soon after, Germany closed American consulates throughout its territories. As the exchange of letters show, Otto Frank would have had to get an exit permit out of the Netherlands, and transit visas for a series of Nazi-occupied countries to one of the four neutral areas where America still had consular offices.

By the end of the summer, they realized it was hopeless. "I am afraid, however, the news is not good news," Straus wrote to Otto Frank on July 1, 1941.

Frank then tried to get to Cuba, a risky, expensive and often corrupt process. "The only way to get to a neutral country are visas or others States such as Cuba," he said in a letter to Straus on Sept. 8. On Oct. 12, 1941, he wrote, "It is all much more difficult as one can imagine and is getting more complicated every day."