Anne Frank

Life and legacy

Annelies Marie Frank was born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany, the second daughter of Otto and Edith Frank. Otto was a businessman from a liberal Jewish family that had lived in Germany for centuries. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the Franks fled to Amsterdam, where Otto established a business selling pectin and spices. Anne grew up in Amsterdam, attending the Montessori school, making friends, and living a normal childhood until the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940 brought the full weight of Nazi anti-Jewish measures.

As restrictions tightened - Jews were barred from public places, forced to wear yellow stars, forbidden from using public transport - Otto Frank prepared a hiding place in the concealed upper floors of his business premises at Prinsengracht 263. On July 6, 1942, the family went into hiding, joined soon after by the Van Pels family (Hermann, Auguste, and their son Peter) and later by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist. For over two years, eight people lived in what Anne called the "Secret Annex," dependent on a handful of Otto's employees - Miep Gies, Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, and Bep Voskuijl - who risked their lives to bring food, news, and supplies.

Anne had received a red-checked diary for her thirteenth birthday, just weeks before going into hiding, and she wrote in it faithfully throughout her confinement. Her diary entries, addressed to an imaginary friend named "Kitty," are remarkable for their literary quality, psychological insight, and emotional range. She wrote about the daily tensions of living in cramped quarters, her conflicts with her mother, her developing feelings for Peter van Pels, the terror of air raids and near-discovery, and her aspirations to become a writer. After hearing a radio broadcast by the Dutch government-in-exile urging people to preserve wartime diaries, Anne began revising her diary for potential publication, showing a literary self-awareness extraordinary for a teenager.

On the morning of August 4, 1944, the Secret Annex was raided by German security police and Dutch collaborators. All eight occupants were arrested and deported. Anne and her sister Margot were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where both died of typhus in February or March 1945 - just weeks before British forces liberated the camp. Of the eight people from the Annex, only Otto Frank survived. He was liberated from Auschwitz by Soviet forces.

Miep Gies had found Anne's diary scattered on the floor of the Annex after the arrest and kept it unread, hoping to return it to Anne. When Otto learned of his daughters' deaths, Gies gave him the diary. "Het Achterhuis" ("The Secret Annex") was published in 1947 and has since been translated into over seventy languages, selling more than thirty million copies. The Anne Frank House at Prinsengracht 263 is now a museum visited by over a million people annually. Anne Frank's diary endures as one of the most powerful documents of the twentieth century - a testament to the human spirit written by a girl who did not survive to see it published.

Key accomplishments

• Wrote a diary during two years in hiding that became one of the most widely read books in history
• Gave a deeply personal voice to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust
• Her diary has been translated into over seventy languages and sold more than thirty million copies
• The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam has become one of the world's most visited museums and memorials
• Inspired global awareness of the Holocaust and the consequences of prejudice and persecution

Quotes

I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

The Diary of a Young Girl, entry dated July 15, 1944

Related figures