AnneFrank.co.ukAnne Frank - The History
Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who lived in Amsterdam during the Second World War. Her diary outlining her family's struggles to avoid capture by the Germans is one of the best known books in the world.
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929 and moved to Amsterdam in 1933 with her parents and her older sister, Margot. The Frank family was Jewish and moved away from Germany to the relative safety of the Netherlands to avoid the Nazi party.
However, the Second World War broke out in 1939 and in 1940 the Germans invaded the Netherlands. By 1942 it was clear that Jewish people in the Netherlands were in very real danger of deportation and the family opted to go into hiding to try and remain safe when Anne's sister received notification that she would be sent to a work camp.
The family, together with the van Pels family and a friend of the Franks, Fritz Pfeffer, hid in secret attic rooms in her father's office building for more than two years. Anne's diary entries tell us what life is like in a situation where they could not leave their rooms or make any noise if they were to escape capture. Ultimately, although a band of loyal friends and employees helped them, the family and other people hiding in the attic rooms were betrayed and sent to concentration camps. The family all started out in Auschwitz but then the girls were moved to Bergen Belsen.
Anne, her mother and sister all died in the camps. Anne lasted just seven months before she caught typhus and died. Her father, Otto, did survive and returned to Amsterdam when he was released where he found Anne's diary. He had her diary published as a book so that people could remember his daughter and the people who died in the camps. The book's original title was 'The Diary of a Young Girl' although it is now better known as the 'The Diary of Anne Frank'.