Early Life
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank was born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany. She was the second daughter of Otto Frank and Edith Frank-Holländer. Anne's sister, Margot, was three years older.
The Franks were liberal Jews and lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Otto Frank was an officer in the German army during World War I.
Move to Amsterdam
After the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the Frank family moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands to escape persecution. Otto established a business there, and the family settled into a normal life as Anne and Margot attended school.
However, in May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the persecution of Jews began there as well. By 1942, Anne's sister Margot received a call-up notice to report to a Nazi work camp.
Life in Hiding
On July 6, 1942, the Frank family went into hiding in a secret annex of Otto Frank's business building. They were later joined by the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and friend of the family.
For more than two years, they lived in the Secret Annex, never going outside. They were helped by Otto's trusted colleagues, including Miep Gies, who brought them food and news of the outside world.
The Diary
Anne received a diary for her 13th birthday, just before going into hiding. She named it "Kitty" and wrote in it regularly during her time in the Secret Annex.
In her diary, Anne documented daily life in hiding, her thoughts, feelings, and observations. She also wrote about her aspirations to become a journalist and writer after the war.
Arrest and Deportation
On August 4, 1944, the Secret Annex was discovered by the Nazi authorities, possibly due to a tip from an informant. All eight people were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Anne and Margot were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated by British troops.
Legacy
Otto Frank, Anne's father, was the only one of the eight people from the Secret Annex to survive the war. After learning of his daughters' deaths, Miep Gies gave him Anne's diary, which she had saved after the arrest.
Otto recognized the literary value of the diary and its importance as a document of the Holocaust. He worked to get it published, and in June 1947, "Het Achterhuis" ("The Secret Annex") was published in Dutch. It was later translated into English as "The Diary of a Young Girl."
Anne's diary has since been translated into more than 70 languages and is one of the most widely read books in the world. It provides a deeply personal account of the Holocaust and has helped millions of readers understand the human impact of war and persecution.