Holocaust Survivor and Famous Diarist: Anne Frank
ANNE FRANK is a Holocaust survivor and famous diarist who was born Annelies Marie Frank on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany. Anne Frank lived in Amsterdam with her family during World War II. Fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews, the family went into hiding for two years; during this time, Frank wrote about her experiences and wishes. She was fifteen when the family was found and sent to the camps, where she died. Her work, The Diary of Anne Frank, has gone on to be read by millions. Published in 1947, Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl has since been translated in 67 languages.
For her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, Frank received a book she had shown her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an autograph book, bound with red-and-white checkered cloth and with a small lock on the front, Frank decided she would use it as a diary, and she began writing in it almost immediately.
On June 6, 1942, the family went into hiding in makeshift quarters in an empty space at the back of Otto Frank's company building, which they referred to as the Secret Annex. The families spent two years in hiding, never once stepping outside the dark, damp, sequestered portion of the building. To pass the time, Frank wrote extensive daily entries in her diary. In addition to her diary, Frank filled a notebook with quotes from her favorite authors, original stories and the beginnings of a novel about her time in the Secret Annex. Her writings reveal a teenage girl with creativity, wisdom, depth of emotion and rhetorical power far beyond her years. She continued writing regularly until her last entry of August 1, 1944.
On August 4, 1944, a German secret police officer accompanied by four Dutch Nazis stormed into the Secret Annex, arresting everyone that was hiding there. On August 5, they were transferred to an overcrowded prison on the Weteringschans. Two days later they were transported to the Westerbork transit camp. They were transferred to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland in the middle of the night on September 3, 1944. Upon arriving at Auschwitz, the men and women were separated. This was the last time that Otto Frank ever saw his wife or daughters. After several months of hard labor hauling heavy stones and grass mats, Anne and Margot were again transferred during the winter to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Their mother was not allowed to go with them, and Edith Frank fell ill and died at Auschwitz shortly thereafter, on January 6, 1945.
At Bergen-Belsen, food was scarce, sanitation was awful and disease ran rampant. Frank and her sister both came down with typhus in the early spring and died within a day of each other sometime in March 1945, only a few weeks before British soldiers liberated the camp. Anne Frank was just 15 years old at the time of her death, one of more than 1 million Jewish children who died in the Holocaust.
In July 1945, after the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of the Frank sisters, Otto Frank was given Anne's diary by Miep Geis, one of his employees who had provided them with food and information on the outside world, and a bundle of loose notes that she had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne. Frank's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts; 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 recognize her ambition to write fiction for publication. In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by Gerrit Bolkestein—a member of the Dutch government in exile, based in London—who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people's oppression under German occupation.[66] He mentioned the publication of letters and diaries, and Frank decided to submit her work when the time came. She began editing her writing, removing some sections and rewriting others, with a view to publication. Her original notebook was supplemented by additional notebooks and loose-leaf sheets of paper.
The diary was published in the Netherlands as Het Achterhuis (The Annex) in 1947, followed by five more printings by 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 American edition, published in 1952 under the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, was positively reviewed. The book 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 was identified as an important cultural figure who represented the destruction of youth during the war. Countless editions, as well as screen and stage adaptations, of the work have been created around the world. The Diary of a Young Girl remains one of the most moving and widely read firsthand accounts of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust.
Anne Frank's diary endures, not only because of the remarkable events she described, but due to her extraordinary gifts as a storyteller and her indefatigable spirit through even the most horrific of circumstances. For all its passages of despair, Frank's diary is essentially a story of faith, hope and love in the face of hate.
Anne has a tremendous legacy. The Anne Frank House, a writer's house and biographical museum, opened on 3 May 1960. In 1963, Anne's father Otto Frank and his second wife set up the Anne Frank Fonds as a charitable foundation, based in Basel, Switzerland. It provides funding for the medical treatment of the Righteous among the Nations on a yearly basis. The Fonds aims to educate young people against racism, and loaned some of Anne Frank's papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington for an exhibition in 2003. Its annual report that year outlined its efforts to contribute on a global level, with support for projects in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
In 1997, the Anne Frank Educational Centre was opened in the Dornbusch neighbourhood of Frankfurt, where Frank lived with her family until 1934. The Centre is "a place where both young people and adults can learn about the history of National Socialism and discuss its relevance to today." The Merwedeplein apartment, where the Frank family lived from 1933 until 1942, remained privately owned until the 2000s. After becoming the focus of a television documentary, the building—in a serious state of disrepair—was purchased by a Dutch housing corporation. Aided by photographs taken by the Frank family and descriptions in letters written by Anne Frank, it was restored to its 1930s appearance. It opened in 2005. Each year, a writer who is unable to write freely in his or her own country is selected for a year-long tenancy, during which they reside and write in the apartment. In 2009, the Anne Frank Center USA launched a national initiative called the Sapling Project, planting saplings from a 170-year-old chestnut tree that Anne had long loved (as denoted in her diary) at 11 different sites nationwide.
Over the years, several films about Anne Frank appeared. 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 media. These include The Anne Frank Ballet by Adam Darius,[114] first performed in 1959, and the choral work Annelies, first performed in 2005. In 1999, Time 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". Madame Tussauds wax museum unveiled an exhibit featuring a likeness of Anne Frank in 2012. Asteroid 5535 Annefrank was named in her honour in 1995, after having been discovered in 1942.
To learn more about Anne Frank and her legacy, visit the Anne Frank website by clicking here!
