Annelies Marie "
Anne"
Frank (12 June 1929 in Frankfurt am Main – early March 1945 in Bergen Belsen) was a Jewish girl who was born in the city of Frankfurt am Main in
Weimar GermanyThe Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government, named after Weimar, the place where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was still Deutsches Reich , however...
, and who lived most of her life in or near
AmsterdamAmsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country...
, in the
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
. By nationality, she was officially considered a
GermanThe Germanic peoples are a historical ethno-linguistic group, originating in Northern Europe and identified by their use of the Indo-European Germanic languages which diversified out of Common Germanic in the course of the Pre-Roman Iron Age...
until 1941, when she lost her nationality owing to the anti-Semitic policies of
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
. She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of
her diaryThe Diary of a Young Girl is a book based on the writings from a diary written by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944 and Anne Frank ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen...
which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
in
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Anne and her family moved from Germany to
AmsterdamAmsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country...
in 1933, the same year as the
NazisNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
gained power in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
. By the beginning of 1940 they were trapped in Amsterdam due to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in the hidden rooms of her father
Otto FrankOtto Heinrich "Pim" Frank was the father of Anne and Margot Frank. As the sole member of his family to survive the Holocaust, he inherited Anne's manuscripts after her death, and arranged for the publication of her diary in 1947.-World War I:Born into a banking family in Frankfurt am Main, Frank...
's office building. After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to
concentration campsInternment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place"...
. Seven months after her arrest, Anne Frank died of
typhusEpidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
in the
Bergen-Belsen concentration campBergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle...
, within days of the death of her sister,
Margot FrankMargot Betti Frank was the older sister of Anne Frank, whose deportation order from the Gestapo hastened the Frank family into hiding, and who subsequently perished in Bergen-Belsen. Margot was also keeping a diary as mentioned by Anne Frank in her diary...
. Her father Otto, the only survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch and first published in English in 1952 as
The Diary of a Young GirlThe Diary of a Young Girl is a book based on the writings from a diary written by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944 and Anne Frank ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen...
.
The diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944. It has been translated into many languages, has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films. Anne Frank has been acknowledged for the quality of her writing, and has become one of the most renowned and most discussed victims of the
HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as The Shoah is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany,...
.
Early life
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank was born on 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, the second daughter of
Otto FrankOtto Heinrich "Pim" Frank was the father of Anne and Margot Frank. As the sole member of his family to survive the Holocaust, he inherited Anne's manuscripts after her death, and arranged for the publication of her diary in 1947.-World War I:Born into a banking family in Frankfurt am Main, Frank...
(1889–1980) and
Edith Frank-HolländerEdith Frank-Holländer was the mother of Anne Frank and Margot Frank.- Early life :...
(1900–45).
Margot FrankMargot Betti Frank was the older sister of Anne Frank, whose deportation order from the Gestapo hastened the Frank family into hiding, and who subsequently perished in Bergen-Belsen. Margot was also keeping a diary as mentioned by Anne Frank in her diary...
(1926–45) was her elder sister. The Franks were
liberal JewsProgressive Judaism is an umbrella term used by strands of Judaism which affiliate to the World Union for Progressive Judaism. They embrace pluralism, modernity, equality and social justice as core values and believe that such values are consistent with a committed Jewish life...
and lived in an
assimilatedCultural assimilation is a political response to the demographic fact of multi-ethnicity which encourages absorption of the minority into the dominant culture...
community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, where the children grew up with
CatholicThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
,
ProtestantProtestantism is a branch within Christianity, containing many denominations with some differing practices and doctrines, that principally originated in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. It is considered to be one of the major divisions within Christianity, together with the Roman...
, and Jewish friends. The Frank family did not observe all of the customs and traditions of
JudaismJudaism is a set of beliefs and practices originating in the Hebrew Bible , as later further explored and explained in the Talmud and other texts...
. Edith Frank was the more devout parent, while Otto Frank, a decorated German officer from
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, was interested in scholarly pursuits and had an extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read.
On 13 March 1933, elections were held in Frankfurt for the municipal council, and
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
's Nazi Party won. Antisemitic demonstrations occurred almost immediately, and the Franks began to fear what would happen to them if they remained in Germany. Later that year, Edith and the children went to
AachenAachen is a historic spa city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the medieval Kings of Germany...
, where they stayed with Edith's mother, Rosa Holländer. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organise the business and to arrange accommodation for his family. The Franks were among about 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939.
Otto Frank began working at the
Opekta WorksOpekta was a business run from 1933 to 1953 by Anne Frank's father Otto Frank, which distributed a pectin-based gelling preparation, to be used in jam making...
, a company that sold the fruit extract
pectinPectin is a structural heteropolysaccharide contained in the primary cell walls of terrestrial plants. It was first isolated and described in 1825 by Henri Braconnot...
, and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in Amsterdam. By February 1934, Edith and the children had arrived in Amsterdam, and the two girls were enrolled in school—Margot in public school and Anne in a
Montessori schoolThe Montessori method is a child-centered, alternative educational method based on the child development theories originated by Italian educator Maria Montessori in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...
. Margot demonstrated ability in arithmetic, and Anne showed aptitude for reading and writing. Her friend
Hanneli GoslarHannah 'Hanneli' Elisabeth Goslar is best known for her friendship with diarist Anne Frank. Both Hannah and Anne attended the Sixth Public Montessori School in Amsterdam and then the Jewish Lyceum...
later recalled that from early childhood, Anne frequently wrote, though she shielded her work with her hands and refused to discuss the content of her writing. Margot and Anne had highly distinct personalities, Margot being well-mannered, reserved, and studious, while Anne was outspoken, energetic, and extroverted.
In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company Pectacon, which was a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages. Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. He was a Jewish butcher, who had fled
OsnabrückOsnabrück is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, some 80 km NNE of Dortmund, 45 km NE of Münster, and some 100 km due west of Hannover. It lies in a valley penned between the Wiehengebirge and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest...
in Germany with his family. In 1939, Edith's mother came to live with the Franks, and remained with them until her death in January 1942.
In May 1940, Germany
invaded the NetherlandsThe Battle of the Netherlands was part of Case Yellow , the German invasion of the Low Countries and France during World War II. The battle lasted from 10 May 1940 until 14 May 1940 when the Dutch main force surrendered. Dutch forces in the province of Zealand continued to resist the Wehrmacht in...
, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon followed. Margot and Anne were excelling in their studies and had many friends, but with the introduction of a decree that Jewish children could attend only Jewish schools, they were enrolled at the Jewish
LyceumA Lyceum can be*an educational institution , or*a public hall used for cultural events like concerts.*Mount Lyceum...
. In April 1941, Otto Frank took action to prevent Pectacon from being confiscated as a Jewish-owned business. He transferred his shares in Pectacon to
Johannes KleimanJohannes Kleiman was one of the Dutch citizens who helped hide Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In the published version of Anne's diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, he is given the pseudonym Mr. Koophuis...
, and resigned as director. The company was liquidated and all assets transferred to Gies and Company, headed by Jan Gies. In December 1941, he followed a similar process to save Opekta. The businesses continued with little obvious change and their survival allowed Otto Frank to earn a minimal income, but sufficient to provide for his family.
Before going into hiding
For her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, Anne received a book she had shown her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an
autographAn autograph is a document written entirely in the handwriting of its author, as opposed to a typeset document or one transcribed by an amanuensis or a copyist; the meaning overlaps with that of the word holograph.Autograph also refers to a person's signature...
book, bound with red-and-green plaid cloth and with a small lock on the front, Anne decided she would use it as a diary, and began writing in it almost immediately. While many of her early entries relate the mundane aspects of her life, she also discusses some of the changes that had taken place in the Netherlands since the German occupation. In her entry dated 20 June 1942, she lists many of the restrictions that had been placed upon the lives of the Dutch Jewish population, and also notes her sorrow at the death of her grandmother earlier in the year.
Anne dreamed about becoming an actress. She loved watching movies, but the Dutch Jews were forbidden access to movie theaters from 8 January 1941 onwards.
In July 1942, Margot Frank received a call-up notice from the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp. Anne was told by her father that the family would go into hiding in rooms above and behind the company's premises on the Prinsengracht, a street along one of Amsterdam's canals, where some of Otto Frank's most trusted employees would help them. The call-up notice forced them to relocate several weeks earlier than had been anticipated.
Life in the Achterhuis
On the morning of Monday, 6 July 1942, the family moved into the hiding place. Their apartment was left in a state of disarray to create the impression that they had left suddenly, and Otto Frank left a note that hinted they were going to
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
. The need for secrecy forced them to leave behind Anne's cat, Moortje. As Jews were not allowed to use
public transportPublic transport comprises passenger transportation services which are available for use by the general public, as opposed to modes for private use such as automobiles or vehicles for hire.Public transport services are usually funded by fares charged to each passenger, with varying levels of subsidy...
, they walked several kilometers from their home, with each of them wearing several layers of clothing as they did not dare to be seen carrying luggage. The
Achterhuis (a Dutch word denoting the rear part of a house, translated as the "Secret Annexe" in English editions of the diary) was a three-story space entered from a landing above the Opekta offices. Two small rooms, with an adjoining bathroom and toilet, were on the first level, and above that a larger open room, with a small room beside it. From this smaller room, a ladder led to the attic. The door to the
Achterhuis was later covered by a bookcase to ensure it remained undiscovered. The main building, situated a block from the
WesterkerkThe Westerkerk is a Protestant church in Amsterdam, built in 1620-1631 after a design by Hendrick de Keyser. The church is right next to Amsterdam's Jordaan district, at the bank of the Prinsengracht canal....
, was nondescript, old and typical of buildings in the western quarters of Amsterdam.
Victor KuglerVictor Kugler was one of the people who helped hide Anne Frank and her family and friends during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In Anne Frank's posthumously published diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, he was referred to under the name Mr...
,
Johannes KleimanJohannes Kleiman was one of the Dutch citizens who helped hide Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In the published version of Anne's diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, he is given the pseudonym Mr. Koophuis...
,
Miep Gies"Miep" redirects here. For The Hungarian Justice and Life Party, see MIEPMiep Gies, née Hermine Santrouschitz , is one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis during World War II. She discovered and preserved Anne's diary after Anne Frank's arrest and deportation...
, and
Bep VoskuijlElisabeth 'Bep' Voskuijl helped conceal Anne Frank and her family from Nazi persecution during the occupation of the Netherlands....
were the only employees who knew of the people in hiding, and with Gies's husband
Jan GiesJan Gies was a member of the Dutch Resistance who, with his wife Miep, helped hide Anne Frank and her family from Nazi persecution during the occupation of the Netherlands.-Life:...
and Voskuijl's father Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, were their "helpers" for the duration of their confinement. These contacts provided the only connection between the outside world and the occupants of the house, and they kept the occupants informed of war news and political developments. They catered for all of their needs, ensured their safety and supplied them with food, a task that grew more difficult with the passage of time. Anne wrote of their dedication and of their efforts to boost morale within the household during the most dangerous of times. All were aware that if caught they could face the
death penaltyCapital punishment or the death penalty, is the execution of a person by judicial process as a punishment for an offense. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences....
for sheltering Jews.
On 13 July, the Franks were joined by the van Pels family: Hermann,
AugusteAnne Frank was a Jewish girl who, along with her family and four other people, hid in rooms at the back of her father's Amsterdam company during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands...
, and 16-year-old Peter, and then in November by
Fritz PfefferFriedrich "Fritz" Pfeffer was a German dentist and Jewish refugee who hid with Anne Frank during the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands, and who perished in the Neuengamme concentration camp in Northern Germany...
, a dentist and friend of the family. Anne wrote of her pleasure at having new people to talk to, but tensions quickly developed within the group forced to live in such confined conditions. After sharing her room with Pfeffer, she found him to be insufferable and resented his intrusion, and she clashed with Auguste van Pels, whom she regarded as foolish. She regarded Hermann van Pels and Fritz Pfeffer as selfish, particularly in regards to the amount of food they consumed. Some time later, after first dismissing the shy and awkward Peter van Pels, she recognised a kinship with him and the two entered a
romanceRomance is a general term that refers to the attempt to express love with words or deeds. It also refers to a feeling of excitement associated with love....
. She received her first kiss from him, but her infatuation with him began to wane as she questioned whether her feelings for him were genuine, or resulted from their shared confinement. Anne Frank formed a close bond with each of the helpers and Otto Frank later recalled that she had anticipated their daily visits with impatient enthusiasm. He observed that Anne's closest friendship was with Bep Voskuijl, "the young typist... the two of them often stood whispering in the corner."
In her writing, Anne Frank examined her relationships with the members of her family, and the strong differences in each of their personalities. She considered herself to be closest emotionally to her father, who later commented, "I got on better with Anne than with Margot, who was more attached to her mother. The reason for that may have been that Margot rarely showed her feelings and didn't need as much support because she didn't suffer from mood swings as much as Anne did." Anne and Margot formed a closer relationship than had existed before they went into hiding, although Anne sometimes expressed jealousy towards Margot, particularly when members of the household criticised Anne for lacking Margot's gentle and placid nature. As Anne began to mature, the sisters were able to confide in each other. In her entry of 12 January 1944, Anne wrote, "Margot's much nicer... She's not nearly so catty these days and is becoming a real friend. She no longer thinks of me as a little baby who doesn't count."
Anne frequently wrote of her difficult relationship with her mother, and of her ambivalence towards her. On 7 November 1942 she described her "contempt" for her mother and her inability to "confront her with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hard-heartedness," before concluding, "She's not a mother to me." Later, as she revised her diary, Anne felt ashamed of her harsh attitude, writing: "Anne is it really you who mentioned hate, oh Anne, how could you?" She came to understand that their differences resulted from misunderstandings that were as much her fault as her mother's, and saw that she had added unnecessarily to her mother's suffering. With this realization, Anne began to treat her mother with a degree of tolerance and respect.
Margot and Anne each hoped to return to school as soon as they were able, and continued with their studies while in hiding. Margot took a shorthand course by correspondence in Bep Voskuijl's name and received high marks. Most of Anne's time was spent reading and studying, and she regularly wrote and edited her diary entries. In addition to providing a narrative of events as they occurred, she wrote about her feelings, beliefs and ambitions, subjects she felt she could not discuss with anyone. As her confidence in her writing grew, and as she began to mature, she wrote of more abstract subjects such as her belief in
GodGod is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....
, and how she defined
human natureHuman nature is the concept that there are a set of characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that all 'normal' humans have in common. The branches of science associated with the study of human nature include sociology, sociobiology and psychology, particularly...
.
Anne aspired to become a journalist, writing in her diary on Wednesday, 5 April 1944:
She continued writing regularly until her final entry of August 1, 1944.
Arrest
On the morning of 4 August 1944, the
Achterhuis was stormed by the German Security Police (
Grüne Polizei) following a tip-off from an informer who was never identified. Led by
SchutzstaffelThe , abbreviated SS- or - was a major Nazi organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The SS grew from a small paramilitary unit to a powerful force that served as the Führer's "Praetorian Guard," the Nazi Party's "Shield Squadron" and a force that, fielding almost a million men ,...
OberscharführerOberscharführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between the years of 1932 and 1945. Translated as “Senior Squad Leader”, Oberscharführer was first used as a rank of the Sturmabteilung and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership...
Karl SilberbauerKarl Josef Silberbauer was a Nazi SD officer holding the rank of SS-Oberscharführer, when, serving in the occupied Netherlands he arrested Anne Frank and her family in their hiding place in 1944.-Life:...
of the
SicherheitsdienstThe Sicherheitsdienst was primarily the intelligence service of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the Gestapo, which the SS had infiltrated heavily...
, the group included at least three members of the Security Police. The Franks, van Pelses and Pfeffer were taken to the
GestapoThe was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning in April 1934, it was under the overall administration of the Schutzstaffel under Heinrich Himmler in his position as leader of the SS and Chief of German Police...
headquarters where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5 August, they were transferred to the Huis van Bewaring (House of Detention), an overcrowded prison on the Weteringschans. Two days later they were transported to
WesterborkWesterbork concentration camp was a World War II concentration camp in Hooghalen, ten kilometers north of Westerbork, in the northeastern Netherlands...
. Ostensibly a transit camp, by this time more than 100,000 Jews had passed through it. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and were sent to the Punishment Barracks for hard labor.
Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested and jailed at the penal camp for enemies of the regime at
AmersfoortAmersfoort is a municipality and the second largest city of the province of Utrecht in central Netherlands. The city is growing quickly and has a well-preserved medieval core. Amersfoort is one of the largest railway junctions in the country, because of its location on two of the Netherlands' main...
. Kleiman was released after seven weeks, but Kugler was held in various work camps until the war's end. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were questioned and threatened by the Security Police but were not detained. They returned to the
Achterhuis the following day, and found Anne's papers strewn on the floor. They collected them, as well as several family photograph albums, and Gies resolved to return them to Otto after the war. On 7 August 1944, Gies attempted to facilitate the release of the prisoners by confronting Silberbauer and offering him money to intervene, but he refused.
Deportation and death
On September 3, the group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to the
Auschwitz concentration campAuschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of Nazi Germany's concentration camps and extermination camps, operational during World War II.The camp took its German name from the hosting town of Oświęcim. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Oświęcim was annexed by Nazi Germany and...
, and arrived after a three-day journey. In the chaos that marked the unloading of the trains, the men were forcibly separated from the women and children, and Otto Frank was wrenched from his family. Of the 1,019 passengers, 549—including all children younger than fifteen—were sent directly to the
gas chamberA gas chamber is an apparatus for killing, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used. Gas chambers were used as a method of execution for...
s. Anne had turned fifteen three months earlier and was one of the youngest people to be spared from her transport. She was soon made aware that most people were gassed upon arrival, and never learned that the entire group from the
Achterhuis had survived this selection. She reasoned that her father, in his mid-fifties and not particularly robust, had been killed immediately after they were separated.
With the other females not selected for immediate death, Anne was forced to strip naked to be disinfected, had her head shaved and was tattooed with an identifying number on her arm. By day, the women were used as
slave laborSlavery is a form of forced labor in which people are considered to be the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation...
and Anne was forced to haul rocks and dig rolls of sod; by night, they were crammed into overcrowded barracks. Witnesses later testified that Anne became withdrawn and tearful when she saw children being led to the gas chambers, though other witnesses reported that more often she displayed strength and courage, and that her gregarious and confident nature allowed her to obtain extra bread rations for Edith, Margot and herself. Disease was rampant and before long, Anne's skin became badly infected by
scabiesScabies, also known as the itch, is a contagious ectoparasite skin infection characterized by superficial burrows and intense pruritus . It is caused by the mite Sarcoptes scabiei. The word scabies itself is derived from the Latin word for "scratch"...
. She and Margot were moved into an infirmary, which was in a state of constant darkness, and infested with rats and mice. Edith Frank stopped eating, saving every morsel of food for her daughters and passing her rations to them, through a hole she made at the bottom of the infirmary wall.
On 28 October, selections began for women to be relocated to
Bergen-BelsenBergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle...
. More than 8,000 women, including Anne and Margot Frank and Auguste van Pels, were transported, but Edith Frank was left behind and later died from starvation. Tents were erected at Bergen-Belsen to accommodate the influx of prisoners, and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased rapidly. Anne was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar and Nanette Blitz, who were confined in another section of the camp. Goslar and Blitz both survived the war and later discussed the brief conversations that they had conducted with Anne through a fence. Blitz described her as bald, emaciated and shivering and Goslar noted that Auguste van Pels was with Anne and Margot Frank, and was caring for Margot, who was severely ill. Neither of them saw Margot as she was too weak to leave her bunk. Anne told both Blitz and Goslar that she believed her parents were dead, and for that reason did not wish to live any longer. Goslar later estimated that their meetings had taken place in late January or early February, 1945.
In March 1945, a
typhusEpidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
epidemicDefining an epidemic can be subjective, depending in part on what is "expected". An epidemic may be restricted to one locale , more general or even global...
spread through the camp and killed approximately 17,000 prisoners. Witnesses later testified that Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock, and that a few days later Anne died. They stated that this occurred a few weeks before the camp was liberated by
British troopsThe British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England and Scotland and...
on 15 April 1945, although the exact dates were not recorded. After liberation, the camp was burned in an effort to prevent further spread of disease, and Anne and Margot were buried in a mass grave, the exact whereabouts of which is unknown.
After the war, it was estimated that of the 107,000
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s deported from the Netherlands between 1942 and 1944, only 5,000 survived. It was also estimated that up to 30,000 Jews remained in the Netherlands, with many people aided by the Dutch underground. Approximately two-thirds of this group of people survived the war.
Otto Frank survived his internment in Auschwitz. After the war ended, he returned to Amsterdam where he was sheltered by Jan and Miep Gies, as he attempted to locate his family. He learned of the death of his wife, Edith, in Auschwitz, but he remained hopeful that his daughters had survived. After several weeks, he discovered that Margot and Anne also had died. He attempted to determine the
fates of his daughters' friendsAnne Frank was a Jewish girl who, along with her family and four other people, hid in rooms at the back of her father's Amsterdam company during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands...
, and learned that many had been murdered. Susanne Ledermann, often mentioned in Anne's diary, had been gassed along with her parents, though her sister, Barbara, a close friend of Margot, had survived. Several of the Frank sisters' school friends had survived, as had the extended families of both Otto and Edith Frank, as they had fled Germany during the mid 1930s, with individual family members settling in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Publication
In July 1945, after the
Red CrossThe International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers worldwide which started to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for the human being, and to prevent and alleviate human suffering, without any...
confirmed the deaths of Anne and Margot, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank the diary, along with a bundle of loose notes that she had saved, in the hope that she could have returned them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realised Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding. In his memoir he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognizing the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter. He also noted that he saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter, and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting, "For me it was a revelation... I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings... She had kept all these feelings to herself". Moved by her repeated wish to be an author, he began to consider having it published.
Anne's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts and she wrote several times that she would never allow anyone to read it. She candidly described her life, her family and companions, and their situation, while beginning to recognise her ambition to write fiction for publication. In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by
Gerrit BolkesteinGerrit Bolkestein was a Dutch politician and member of the Free-minded Democratic League....
—a member of the Dutch
government in exileA government in exile is a political group that claims to be a country's legitimate government, but for various reasons is unable to exercise its legal power, and instead resides in a foreign country. Governments in exile usually operate under the assumption that they will one day return to their...
—who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people's oppression under German occupation. He mentioned the publication of letters and diaries, and Anne decided to submit her work when the time came. She began editing her writing, removing sections and rewriting others, with the view to publication. Her original notebook was supplemented by additional notebooks and loose-leaf sheets of paper. She created
pseudonymA pseudonym is a fictitious name used by a person, or sometimes, a group.Pseudonyms are often used to hide an individual's real identity, as with writers' pen names, graffiti artists, resistance fighters' or terrorists' noms de guerre and computer hackers' handles. Actors, musicians, and other...
s for the members of the household and the helpers. The van Pels family became Hermann, Petronella, and Peter van Daan, and Fritz Pfeffer became Albert Düssell. In this edited version, she also addressed each entry to "Kitty," a fictional character in
Cissy van MarxveldtSetske de Haan , better known by her pen name Cissy van Marxveldt, was a Dutch writer of children's books. She is the author of the series of Joop ter Heul novels.-Biography:...
's
Joop ter HeulJoop ter Heul was a fictional character in a series of five books written for teenage girls by Dutch novelist Setske de Haan , who wrote under the pen name Cissy van Marxveldt. Joop was high-spirited, headstrong and stubborn. The first four books, published over a six-year period deal with her...
novels that Anne enjoyed reading. Otto Frank used her original diary, known as "version A", and her edited version, known as "version B", to produce the first version for publication. He removed certain passages, most notably those in which Anne is critical of her parents (especially her mother), and sections that discussed Anne's growing
sexualityHuman sexuality is how people experience the erotic and express themselves as sexual beings. Frequently driven by the desire for sexual pleasure, human sexuality has biological, physical and emotional aspects...
. Although he restored the true identities of his own family, he retained all of the other pseudonyms.
Otto Frank gave the diary to the historian Annie Romein-Verschoor, who tried unsuccessfully to have it published. She then gave it to her husband
Jan RomeinJan Romein was a Dutch journalist and historian.Born in Rotterdam, Romein married the writer and historian Anne Helena Margaretha Verschoor on August 14, 1920.Romein began writing while a student in 1916...
, who wrote an article about it, titled "Kinderstem" ("A Child's Voice"), published in the newspaper
Het ParoolHet Parool is an Amsterdam-based daily newspaper. It was founded as a resistance paper during World War II...
on 3 April 1946. He wrote that the diary "stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of
fascismFascism, , comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology developed in Italy. Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in...
, more so than all the evidence at
NurembergThe Nuremberg trials were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II....
put together" His article attracted attention from publishers, and the diary was published in the Netherlands as
Het Achterhuis in 1947, followed by a second run in 1950.
It was first published in Germany and France in 1950, and after being rejected by several publishers, was first published in the United Kingdom in 1952. The first
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
edition was published in 1952 under the title
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young GirlThe Diary of a Young Girl is a book based on the writings from a diary written by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944 and Anne Frank ultimately died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen...
and was positively reviewed. It was successful in France, Germany and the United States, but in the United Kingdom it failed to attract an audience and by 1953 was out of print. Its most noteworthy success was in Japan where it received critical acclaim and sold more than 100,000 copies in its first edition. In Japan, Anne Frank quickly became identified as an important cultural figure who represented the destruction of youth during the war.
A play based upon the diary, by
Frances Goodrich and Albert HackettAlbert Maurice Hackett was an American dramatist and screenwriter most noted for his collaborations with his partner and wife Frances Goodrich.-Early years:Hackett was born to actors Arthur V...
, premiered in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
on 5 October 1955, and later won a
Pulitzer Prize for DramaThe Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than being the calendar...
. It was followed by the
1959 movieThe year 1959 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* The Three Stooges make their 190th and last short film, Sappy Bullfighters.*September 18 - The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx marries his second wife, Barbara Blakely....
The Diary of Anne FrankThe Diary of Anne Frank is a 1959 motion picture based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same name, which was based on the diary of Anne Frank. It was directed by George Stevens, with a screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett...
, which was a critical and commercial success. The biographer,
Melissa MüllerMelissa Müller is an Austrian journalist and author.After working as an au pair for some time in London, Müller decided first for a study of the management economics and German Studies, afterwards she worked for different restaurant editorships and magazines.In the mid-1990s she decided to write...
, later wrote that the dramatization had "contributed greatly to the romanticizing, sentimentalizing and universalizing of Anne's story." Over the years the popularity of the diary grew, and in many schools, particularly in the United States, it was included as part of the
curriculumIn formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...
, introducing Anne Frank to new generations of readers.
In 1986, the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation published the "Critical Edition" of the diary. It includes comparisons from all known versions, both edited and unedited. It also includes discussion asserting its authentication, as well as additional historical information relating to the family and the diary itself.
Cornelis Suijk—a former director of the Anne Frank Foundation and president of the
U.S. Center for Holocaust Education FoundationThe United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' living memorial to The Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM is dedicated to help leaders and citizens of the world to confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen...
—announced in 1999 that he was in the possession of five pages that had been removed by Otto Frank from the diary prior to publication; Suijk claimed that Otto Frank gave these pages to him shortly before his death in 1980. The missing diary entries contain critical remarks by Anne Frank about her parents' strained marriage, and discusses Anne's lack of affection for her mother. Some controversy ensued when Suijk claimed publishing rights over the five pages and intended to sell them to raise money for his U.S. Foundation. The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, the formal owner of the manuscript, demanded the pages be handed over. In 2000, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science agreed to donate
US$The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States. The U.S. dollar is normally abbreviated as the dollar sign, $, or as USD or US$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies and from others that use the $ symbol. It is divided into 100 cents .The U.S...
300,000 to Suijk's Foundation, and the pages were returned in 2001. Since then, they have been included in new editions of the diary.
Reception
The diary has been praised for its literary merits. Commenting on Anne Frank's writing style, the
dramaDrama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective...
tist
Meyer LevinMeyer Levin was an American novelist who commented on the Leopold and Loeb case and wrote the 1956 novel Compulsion inspired by it...
commended Frank for "sustaining the tension of a well-constructed novel", and was so impressed by the quality of her work that he collaborated with Otto Frank on a dramatisation of the diary shortly after its publication. The
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
John BerrymanJohn Allyn Berryman was an American poet, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and often considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry. He was the author of The Dream Songs, which are playful, witty, and...
wrote that it was a unique depiction, not merely of adolescence but of the "conversion of a child into a person as it is happening in a precise, confident, economical style stunning in its honesty".
In her introduction to the diary's first American edition,
Eleanor RooseveltAnna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and assumed a role as an advocate for civil rights...
described it as "one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read."
John F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
discussed Anne Frank in a 1961 speech, and said, "Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank." In the same year, the
SovietThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
writer
Ilya EhrenburgIlya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg , – August 31, 1967 was a Soviet writer, journalist and propagandist, whose 1954 novel The Thaw gave its name to the Khrushchev Thaw.- Life and work :...
wrote of her: "one voice speaks for six million—the voice not of a sage or a poet but of an ordinary little girl."
As Anne Frank's stature as both a writer and
humanistHumanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority...
has grown, she has been discussed specifically as a symbol of the Holocaust and more broadly as a representative of persecution.
Hillary Rodham ClintonHillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving within the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she served as First Lady of...
, in her acceptance speech for an
Elie Wiesel Humanitarian AwardEliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE is a writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of 57 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust and his imprisonment in several concentration camps...
in 1994, read from Anne Frank's diary and spoke of her "awakening us to the folly of indifference and the terrible toll it takes on our young," which Clinton related to contemporary events in
SarajevoSarajevo is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population of 304,614 people in the four municipalities that make up the city proper, and an estimated urban area population of 421,289 people in the Sarajevo Canton . It is also the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and...
,
SomaliaSomalia , officially the Republic of Somalia and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, is a country located in the Horn of Africa...
and
RwandaThe Republic of Rwanda is a small landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa, bordered by Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. Home to approaching 10 million people, Rwanda supports the densest population in continental Africa, most of whom...
. After receiving a humanitarian award from the Anne Frank Foundation in 1994,
Nelson MandelaNelson Rolihlahla Mandela is a former President of South Africa, the first to be elected in a fully representative democratic election, who held office from 1994–99. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of the African National Congress's armed wing Umkhonto...
addressed a crowd in
JohannesburgJohannesburg also known as Jozi or Jo'burg, is the largest city in South Africa. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, saying he had read Anne Frank's diary while in prison and "derived much encouragement from it." He likened her struggle against Nazism to his struggle against
apartheid, drawing a parallel between the two philosophies with the comment "because these beliefs are patently false, and because they were, and will always be, challenged by the likes of Anne Frank, they are bound to fail." Also in 1994,
Václav HavelVáclav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, former dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
said that "Anne Frank's legacy is very much alive and it can address us fully" in relation to the political and social changes occurring at the time in former Eastern Bloc countries.
Primo LeviPrimo Michele Levi was a Jewish-Italian chemist, Holocaust survivor and author of memoirs, short stories, poems, essays and novels....
suggested that Anne Frank is frequently identified as a single representative of the millions of people who suffered and died as she did because, "One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live." In her closing message in
Melissa MüllerMelissa Müller is an Austrian journalist and author.After working as an au pair for some time in London, Müller decided first for a study of the management economics and German Studies, afterwards she worked for different restaurant editorships and magazines.In the mid-1990s she decided to write...
's biography of Anne Frank, Miep Gies expressed a similar thought, though she attempted to dispel what she felt was a growing misconception that "Anne symbolises the six million victims of the Holocaust", writing: "Anne's life and death were her own individual fate, an individual fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot, and should not, stand for the many individuals whom the Nazis robbed of their lives... But her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust."
Otto Frank spent the remainder of his life as custodian of his daughter's legacy, saying, "It's a strange role. In the normal family relationship, it is the child of the famous parent who has the honor and the burden of continuing the task. In my case the role is reversed." He also recalled his publisher explaining why he thought the diary has been so widely read, with the comment "he said that the diary encompasses so many areas of life that each reader can find something that moves him personally".
Simon WiesenthalSimon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian-Jewish architectural engineer and Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter who pursued Nazi war criminals in an effort to bring them to justice.Following four and a half years in the German concentration camps such...
later expressed a similar opinion when he said that Anne Frank's diary had raised more widespread awareness of the Holocaust than had been achieved during the
Nuremberg TrialsThe Nuremberg trials were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II....
, because "people identified with this child. This was the impact of the Holocaust, this was a family like my family, like your family and so you could understand this."
In June 1999,
TimeTime is an American newsmagazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong. As of 2009, Time no longer publishes a Canadian advertiser edition...
magazine published a special edition titled "
Time 100: The Most Important People of the CenturyThe Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century is a compilation of the 20th century's 100 most influential people, published in Time magazine in 1999....
". Anne Frank was selected as one of the "Heroes & Icons", and the writer, Roger Rosenblatt, described her legacy with the comment, "The passions the book ignites suggest that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism, girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world—the moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live and question and hope for the future of human beings." He also notes that while her courage and pragmatism are admired, it is her ability to analyze herself and the quality of her writing that are the key components of her appeal. He writes, "The reason for her immortality was basically literary. She was an extraordinarily good writer, for any age, and the quality of her work seemed a direct result of a ruthlessly honest disposition."
Denials and legal action
After the diary became widely known in the late 1950s, various allegations against the diary were published, with the earliest published criticisms occurring in Sweden and Norway. Among the accusations was a claim that the diary had been written by
Meyer LevinMeyer Levin was an American novelist who commented on the Leopold and Loeb case and wrote the 1956 novel Compulsion inspired by it...
, and that Anne Frank had not really existed.
In 1958,
Simon WiesenthalSimon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian-Jewish architectural engineer and Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter who pursued Nazi war criminals in an effort to bring them to justice.Following four and a half years in the German concentration camps such...
was challenged by a group of protesters at a performance of
The Diary of Anne Frank in Vienna who asserted that Anne Frank had never existed, and who challenged Wiesenthal to prove her existence by finding the man who had arrested her. He began searching for
Karl SilberbauerKarl Josef Silberbauer was a Nazi SD officer holding the rank of SS-Oberscharführer, when, serving in the occupied Netherlands he arrested Anne Frank and her family in their hiding place in 1944.-Life:...
and found him in 1963. When interviewed, Silberbauer readily admitted his role, and identified Anne Frank from a photograph as one of the people arrested. He provided a full account of events and recalled emptying a briefcase full of papers onto the floor. His statement corroborated the version of events that had previously been presented by witnesses such as Otto Frank.
Opponents of the diary continued to express the view that it was not written by a child, but had been created as pro-Jewish propaganda, with Otto Frank accused of fraud. In 1959, Frank took legal action in
LübeckThe Hanseatic City of Lübeck is the second largest city in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany, and one of the major ports of Germany. It was for several centuries the "capital" of the Hanseatic League and because of its Brick Gothic architectural heritage is on UNESCO's list of World...
against Lothar Stielau, a school teacher and former
Hitler YouthThe Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung .-Origins:The first NSDAP-related organization of German youth was the Jugendbund...
member who published a school paper that described the diary as a forgery. The complaint was extended to include Heinrich Buddegerg, who wrote a letter in support of Stielau, which was published in a Lübeck newspaper. The court examined the diary, and, in 1960, authenticated the handwriting as matching that in letters known to have been written by Anne Frank, and declared the diary to be genuine. Stielau recanted his earlier statement, and Otto Frank did not pursue the case any further.
In 1976, Otto Frank took action against Heinz Roth of Frankfurt, who published pamphlets stating that the diary was a forgery. The judge ruled that if he published further statements he would be subjected to a fine of 500,000 German marks and a six-month jail sentence. Roth appealed against the court's decision and died in 1978, a year before his appeal was rejected.
Otto Frank mounted a further lawsuit in 1976 against Ernst Römer who distributed a pamphlet titled "The Diary of Anne Frank, Bestseller, A Lie". When another man named Edgar Geiss distributed the same pamphlet in the courtroom, he too was prosecuted. Römer was fined 1,500 Deutschmarks, and Geiss was sentenced to six months imprisonment. On appeal the sentence was reduced, but the case against him was dropped following a subsequent appeal because the statutory limitation for libel had expired.
With Otto Frank's death in 1980, the original diary, including letters and loose sheets, were willed to the Dutch Institute for War Documentation, who commissioned a forensic study of the diary through the Netherlands Ministry of Justice in 1986. They examined the handwriting against known examples and found that they matched, and determined that the paper, glue and ink were readily available during the time the diary was said to have been written. Their final determination was that the diary is authentic, and their findings were published in what has become known as the "Critical Edition" of the diary. On 23 March 1990, the
HamburgHamburg is the second-largest city in Germany and the sixth-largest city in the European Union...
Regional Court confirmed its authenticity.
In 1991,
Holocaust deniersHolocaust denial is the claim that the genocide of Jews during World War II—usually referred to as the Holocaust—did not occur at all, or that it did not happen in the manner or to the extent historically recognized....
Robert FaurissonRobert Faurisson is a French Holocaust denier, who was formerly a professor of literature at the University of Lyon II...
and
Siegfried Verbeke-History:Verbeke became a public figure in 1977 when, together with the later Vlaams Blok ideologist and senator Roeland Raes, he founded the Flemish denial magazine Haro. This magazine distributed tapes from various speeches made by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring...
produced a booklet titled
The Diary of Anne Frank: A Critical Approach. They claimed that Otto Frank wrote the diary, based on assertions that the diary contained several contradictions, that hiding in the
Achterhuis would have been impossible, and that the
proseProse is the ordinary form of written language. The word "prose" is derived from the Latin prosa, which literally translates to "straightforward". Prose is adopted for the discussion of facts and topical reading, as it is often articulated in free form writing style...
style and handwriting of Anne Frank were not those of a teenager.
The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Funds in Basel instigated a civil law suit in December 1993, to prohibit the further distribution of
The Diary of Anne Frank: A Critical Approach in the Netherlands. On 9 December 1998, the Amsterdam District Court ruled in favour of the claimants, forbade any further denial of the authenticity of the diary and unsolicited distribution of publications to that effect, and imposed a penalty of 25,000 guilders per infringement.
Legacy
On 3 May 1957, a group of citizens, including Otto Frank, established the Anne Frank Stichting in an effort to rescue the Prinsengracht building from demolition and to make it accessible to the public. The
Anne Frank HouseThe Anne Frank House on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is a museum dedicated to Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank, who hid from Nazi persecution with her family and four other people in hidden rooms at the rear of the building...
opened on 3 May 1960. It consists of the Opekta warehouse and offices and the
Achterhuis, all unfurnished so that visitors can walk freely through the rooms. Some personal relics of the former occupants remain, such as movie star photographs glued by Anne to a wall, a section of wallpaper on which Otto Frank marked the height of his growing daughters, and a map on the wall where he recorded the advance of the
Allied ForcesIn general, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose. In English usage, those who share a common goal and whose work toward that goal is complementary may be viewed as allies for various purposes even when...
, all now protected behind Perspex sheets. From the small room which was once home to Peter van Pels, a walkway connects the building to its neighbours, also purchased by the Foundation. These other buildings are used to house the diary, as well as changing exhibits that chronicle different aspects of the Holocaust and more contemporary examinations of racial intolerance in various parts of the world. It has become one of Amsterdam's main tourist attractions, and in 2005 received a record 965,000 visitors. The House provides information via the internet, as well as travelling exhibitions, for those not able to visit. In 2005, exhibitions travelled to 32 countries in Europe, Asia, North America and South America.
In 1963, Otto Frank and his second wife, Elfriede Geiringer-Markovits, set up the Anne Frank Fonds as a
charitable foundationA charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . The term is relatively general and can technically refer to a public charity or a private foundation. It differs from other types of NPOs in that its focus is centered around goals of a general philanthropic nature A charitable...
, based in
BaselBasel is Switzerland's third most populous city . With 830000 inhabitants in the tri-national metropolitan area , Basel is Switzerland's second-largest urban area....
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
. The Fonds raises money to donate to causes "as it sees fit". Upon his death, Otto willed the diary's copyright to the Fonds, on the provision that the first 80,000
Swiss francThe franc is the currency and legal tender of Switzerland and Liechtenstein; it is also legal tender in the Italian exclave Campione d'Italia. Although not formally legal tender in the German exclave Büsingen , it is widely used on a day-to-day basis...
s in income each year was to be distributed to his heirs, and any income above this figure was to be retained by the Fonds to use for whatever projects its administrators considered worthy. It provides funding for the medical treatment of the
Righteous among the NationsRighteous among the Nations , which may at times refer to the B'nei Noah or Noahides as well, is a term used in Judaism to refer to non-Jews who abide by the Seven Laws of Noah and thus are assured of meriting paradise.In secular usage, the term is used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who...
on a yearly basis. It has aimed to educate young people against racism and has loaned some of Anne Frank's papers to the
United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumThe United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' living memorial to The Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM is dedicated to help leaders and citizens of the world to confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen...
in Washington, D.C. for an exhibition in 2003. Its annual report of the same year gave some indication of its effort to contribute on a global level, with its support of projects in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Merwedeplein apartment, in which the Frank family lived from 1933 until 1942, remained privately owned until the early 2000s, when a television documentary focused public attention upon it. In a serious state of disrepair, it was purchased by a Dutch housing corporation, and aided by photographs taken by the Frank family and descriptions of the apartment and furnishings in letters written by Anne Frank, was restored to its 1930s appearance. Teresien da Silva of the Anne Frank House, and Anne Frank's cousin Bernhard "Buddy" Elias also contributed to the restoration project. It opened in 2005 with the aim of providing a safe haven for a selected writer who is unable to write freely in his or her own country. Each selected writer is allowed one year's tenancy during which to reside and work in the apartment. The first writer selected was the
AlgeriaAlgeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country located in North Africa. It is the largest country on the Mediterranean sea, the second largest on the African continent and the eleventh-largest country in the world in terms of land area.It is bordered by Tunisia in...
n novelist and poet, El-Mahdi Acherchour.
In June 2007, "Buddy" Elias donated some 25,000 family documents to the Anne Frank House. Among the artifacts are Frank family photographs taken in Germany and Holland and the letter Otto Frank sent his mother in 1945 informing her that his wife and daughters had perished in Nazi concentration camps.
In November 2007, the
Anne Frank treeThe Anne Frank tree is the horse-chestnut tree in the city center of Amsterdam that was featured in Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. Anne Frank described the tree from The Annexe, the building where she and her family were hiding from the Nazis during World War II...
was scheduled to be cut down to prevent it from falling down on one of the surrounding buildings, after a fungal disease had affected the trunk of this
horse-chestnut treeThe genus Aesculus comprises 13-19 species of woody trees and shrubs native to the temperate northern hemisphere, with 6 species native to North America and 7-13 species native to Eurasia; there are also several hybrids. Species are deciduous or evergreen...
. Dutch economist Arnold Heertje, who was also in hiding during the Second World War, said about the tree: "This is not just any tree. The Anne Frank tree is bound up with the persecution of the Jews." The Tree Foundation, a group of tree conservationists, started a civil case in order to stop the felling of the horse chestnut, which received international media attention. A Dutch court ordered the city officials and conservationists to explore alternatives and come to a solution. The parties agreed to build a steel construction that would prolong the life of the tree up to 15 years.
Over the years, several
films about Anne Frank appeared and her life and writings have inspired a diverse group of artists and social commentators to make reference to her in literature, popular music, television, and other forms of media. These include
The Anne Frank Ballet by
Adam DariusAdam Darius is an American dancer, mime artist, writer and choreographer. As a performer, he has appeared in over 80 countries across six continents...
, first performed in 1959, and the choral work
AnneliesAnnelies is a full-length choral work based on the Diary of Anne Frank. The music is by the British composer James Whitbourn and the libretto is compiled from the diary by Melanie Challenger....
, first performed in 2005. The only known footage of the real Anne Frank comes from a 1941
silent filmA silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made practical in the late 1920s with...
recorded for her newly-wed next-door neighbor. She is seen leaning out of a second-floor window in an attempt to see the bride and groom better. The couple survived the war and gave the video to the
Anne Frank HouseThe Anne Frank House on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is a museum dedicated to Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank, who hid from Nazi persecution with her family and four other people in hidden rooms at the rear of the building...
, a museum in Amsterdam.
In 1999,
TimeTime is an American newsmagazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong. As of 2009, Time no longer publishes a Canadian advertiser edition...
named Anne Frank among the heroes and icons of the 20th century on their list
The Most Important People of the Century, stating: "With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human dignity".
See also
- People associated with Anne Frank
Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who, along with her family and four other people, hid in rooms at the back of her father's Amsterdam company during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands...
- Hana Brady
Hana Brady was a Jewish girl and Holocaust victim...
- Janet Langhart
Janet Langhart Cohen is an American model, television journalist and author. She serves as President and CEO of Langhart Communications and is the spouse of former Defense Secretary William Cohen...
- Writer of one act play "Anne and Emmett"
- Rutka Laskier
Rutka Laskier was a Jewish teenager from Poland who is best known for her 1943 diary chronicling three months of her life during the Holocaust.-Biography:...
- Searching for Anne Frank: Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa
Anne Frank: Letters from Amsterdam to Iowa is a book about Anne Frank and her pen pal, Juanita Wagner. It is written by Mirjam Pressler.-Summary:...
(book)
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