Anne Frank
German-born Jewish diarist and Holocaust victim.
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Annelies Marie Frank was born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany, to Edith and Otto Frank. Her older sister, Margot, completed the family. The Franks were Reform Jews, meaning they did not follow all Jewish customs, and they lived in a mixed community of Jews and non-Jews. Otto and Edith valued learning and had a large home library.
The family first lived at Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt-Eckenheim, then moved in 1931 to Ganghoferstraße 24 in the Dichterviertel area. Both houses still stand. After the Nazi Party won the federal election in 1933 and Adolf Hitler became chancellor, Edith took Anne and Margot to stay with her mother, Rosa Hollander, in Aachen. Otto stayed in Frankfurt but soon received a job offer in Amsterdam, working for Opekta, a company that sold pectin.
He moved there to set up the business and find housing. Edith traveled between Aachen and Amsterdam, eventually renting an apartment on Merwedeplein in the Rivierenbuurt neighborhood, where many Jewish-German refugees lived. Edith joined Otto in November 1933, Margot followed a month later, and Anne stayed with her grandmother until February 1934, when the whole family reunited in Amsterdam.
In the Netherlands
The Franks were among the 300,000 Jews who left Germany between 1933 and 1939. In Amsterdam, Margot attended public school and became a top student despite initial trouble with Dutch. Anne started at the 6th Montessori School in 1934 and quickly made friends, including Hanneli Goslar. In 1957, the school was renamed the Anne Frank School.
In 1938, Otto started a second company, Pectacon, a wholesaler of herbs and spices. Hermann van Pels, a Jewish butcher who had fled Osnabrück, worked there as a spice advisor. In 1939, Edith’s mother Rosa moved in with the Franks; she died in January 1942. In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began imposing restrictive laws on Jews.
Otto tried to emigrate to the United States, but his visa application was never processed because the US consulate in Rotterdam was destroyed by German bombing on May 14, 1940, losing all paperwork. On July 22, 1941, 12-year-old Anne was filmed watching a neighbor’s wedding from her balcony—the only known footage of her. After the summer of 1941, she was barred from attending her school.
Lore & Background
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929. In 1934, when she was four-and-a-half, Frank and her family moved to Amsterdam after Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party was elected to govern Germany. By May 1940, her family were trapped in Amsterdam due to Germany's occupation. Frank lost her German citizenship in 1941 and became stateless.
Despite spending most of her life in the Netherlands and being a de facto Dutch national, she never officially became a Dutch citizen. As persecution of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in a secret annex concealed behind a bookcase in the building where Frank's father, Otto Frank, worked. The family were arrested two years later by the Gestapo, on 4 August 1944. Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to concentration camps.
On 1 November 1944, Anne Frank and her sister Margot were transferred from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died (presumably of typhus) a few months later. The Red Cross estimated that they died in March 1945, with Dutch authorities setting 31 March as the official date. Later research has alternatively suggested that they may have died in February or early March. Otto Frank, the only Holocaust survivor in the family, returned to Amsterdam after World War II to find that Anne's diary had been saved by his secretaries, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl.
Reader's Guide
Anne Frank's diary, which she began writing on 12 June 1942 for her thirteenth birthday, documents her life in hiding from July 1942 until her arrest in August 1944. She wrote in an autograph book bound with red-and-white checkered cloth, naming it 'Kitty'. Her entries describe the restrictions placed on Dutch Jews, the sudden move into hiding after her sister Margot received a call-up notice on 5 July 1942, and daily life in the Secret Annex. The hiding place was a three-story space entered from a landing above the Opekta offices on the Prinsengracht, concealed behind a bookcase.
The Franks were joined by the Van Pels family on 13 July 1942, and later by Fritz Pfeffer in November. Anne wrote of tensions with her housemates, her growing kinship with Peter van Pels, and the dedication of the helpers—Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, Bep Voskuijl, Jan Gies, and Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl—who risked death to shelter them. Moved by his daughter's repeated wishes to be an author, Otto Frank published her diary in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Anne Frank?
Anne Frank was a German-born Jewish girl who spent two years in hiding in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. She is best known for the diary she kept while concealed in a secret annex with her family.
What is The Diary of a Young Girl?
It is the published record of Anne's daily observations, feelings, and family life during the years her household spent hidden in Amsterdam. The book was released after World War II and has since been translated into more than 70 languages.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Anne Frank (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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