Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. She is most popularily known for the diary entries she made while hiding in an attic during the Nazi regime. Anne’s father had been an officer in the German Army during World War I. In 1933, when Hitler began his campaign against the Jews, Otto Frank, Anne’s father feared for his families’ future in Germany. He moved them from Frankfurt and headed for the Netherlands.
In May, 1940, the Germans invaded and took control of the Netherlands, which meant the Franks were once again forced to live under Nazi rule. By 1942, any Jew found in Nazi territory were arrested and sent to death camps (labor camps) just for being Jews. Fearful for their lives, the Frank family was forced into hiding. While in hiding Anne continued writing in her diary regularly.
Anne and her family lived in the attic for two years. She wrote in her diary regularly, but she didn’t just write about the Nazi persecution or the experience of living in secret. She also wrote about the ordinary details of her adolescent life. She wrote about how much she hated potatoes and how her older sister was clearly her parents’ favorite. She described the jokes people made, and about the crush she had on a young man whose family was also living in the attic. After her first kiss, Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “My head lay on his shoulder, with his on top of mine. Oh, it was so wonderful. I could hardly talk, my pleasure was too intense; he caressed my cheek and arm, a bit clumsily, and played with my hair.”
Anne confided to her diary. She wrote: “Sometime this terrible war will be over. Surely the time will come when we are people again, and not just Jews.” She made her final entry in the diary on August 1, 1944. Three days later, the hiding place was discovered by the Gestapo, and Anne and her family were deported to Auschwitz. Anne was later moved to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus in March 1945, just 2 months before Holland was liberated. Of the Frank family, only Anne’s father, Otto, survived. In 1947, he published his daughter’s diary, which had been rescued from the floor of the secret room. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was published in English in 1953. In it, Anne Frank wrote: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart.”
Anne Frank was only 15 years old when she died but her legacy of hoping that all people would be treated simply as people without the labels of “Jew” , “black” , “Catholic” , etc. lives on to this day.
