Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (12 June 1929 – early March 1945) was a Jewish girl born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in Weimar Germany. She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her diary which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
Easton Press Anne Frank books
The Diary of a Young Girl - Books That Changed The World - 2002
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Who was Anne Frank?
She’s one of the most influential and widely read writers of the 20th century, and she never lived to see her book in print—or even to see her 16th birthday. We’re talking about Anne Frank, a symbol of resilience and lost innocence in the face of the Holocaust.
Anne Frank was born in 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, the youngest daughter of a Jewish family.
Adolf Hitler and his anti-Semitic Nazi Party rose to power in 1933, so the Frank family moved to the more tolerant city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
In June 1940, the Netherlands was invaded by Germany, and conditions for people there—especially Jews—began to deteriorate. The Franks tried to leave for the U.S. but were blocked from doing so by restrictive immigration policies.
Later, on her 13th birthday, Anne received a simple present that would have enormous historical repercussions: a blank diary.
In it, Anne chronicled her thoughts and feelings, writing about her family, friends, and boys—all the kinds of things you might expect from a young teenage girl.
As Anne began her diary, the situation in the occupied Netherlands worsened. Jews were stripped of their rights, forbidden from attending schools, shopping at most stores, and using public transportation. They were subject to curfews and were being sent to work camps.
Faced with these increasingly difficult circumstances, the Franks made a daring decision: they would go into hiding.
Their hiding place was a series of unoccupied rooms above the warehouse of the company where Anne’s father, Otto Frank, worked.
In early July 1942, the Franks fled to this Secret Annex while leaving acquaintances to believe they had fled the country. The family attempted to wait out the Nazi occupation.
They were helped by a small group of friends who brought them food and supplies and kept their secret. But the Franks and the others could never leave the annex. They lived in constant fear of being discovered and arrested.
All this time, for over two years, Anne kept her diary. She wrote with a wit and awareness well beyond her years.
Tragically, the Frank family’s time in the Secret Annex came to an abrupt end in August 1944. The Gestapo raided their quarters and sent everyone to concentration camps.
The Franks were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp, and later Anne and her sister Margot Frank were moved to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
In late winter or early spring of 1945, they both died there, most likely of typhus. The only person from the annex to survive the war was Anne’s father, Otto Frank.
After the end of the war, Otto returned to Amsterdam. One of the women who had brought them food while they were in hiding, Miep Gies, gave him a pile of papers and documents she had rescued from the annex. Among those papers was Anne’s diary.
Otto was astounded by what he read and sought to bring Anne’s writing to a wider public.
First published in the Netherlands in 1947, Anne’s diary eventually came out in America in 1952 under the title The Diary of a Young Girl.
Anne Frank’s diary remains one of the most widely read books across the globe. It has been translated into over 60 languages, and more than 30 million copies are in print.
The world will never forget the story of Anne Frank and her family, along with the millions of others who lost their lives in the The Holocaust.