Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank was a young Jewish girl who wrote a diary detailing her family’s two-year struggle hiding in an attic to escape the Nazi invasion. Her strength and courage is captured in her writings and her diary remains an important piece of history. Anne is one of the Holocaust’s most remembered victims. Years after her death, “The Diary of a Young Girl” was published and has since become one of the world’s most recognized books. Through her daily writings, she shares her struggles, fears, and hopes, as a Jewish teenager living through the Holocaust.
Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany. Her family later fled to Amsterdam in 1933, as the Nazi party led by Adolf Hitler had taken control of the government. Over the next several years, the Nazi’s would continue their invasion, sparking World War II. Nazi occupiers imposed harsh anti-Jewish measures including the building of concentration camps and the mass murders of Jewish people. To avoid Nazi persecution, the Frank family went into hiding, in an empty space at the back of Otto Frank’s company building, which they referred to as the Secret Annex.
Just a few months before the families went into hiding, Anne received a red-and-white plaid diary for her 13th birthday. Her first entry read: “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.” Her diary would become the voice of the Holocaust for many years.
After two years in hiding, The Frank family was captured and sent to Auschwitz, a concentration camp located in German-occupied Poland. Just weeks before the liberation, Anne and her sister reportedly died of typhus. Otto Frank was the only member of the family to survive, and he would go on to share Anne’s story through her diary. “The Diary of a Young Girl” was released on June 25, 1947 and would go on to become one of history’s treasures.
Anne would later be knighted with the Cardinal Virtue of Temperance.