Anne Frank
1929 – 1945 · Germany
Known for: The Diary of a Young Girl, Holocaust victim, Symbol of human spirit
“Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart”
Biography
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank was a German-Dutch diarist of Jewish heritage who became one of the most discussed victims of the Holocaust. Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Anne's family moved to Amsterdam in 1933 after the Nazis gained power in Germany. When the German occupation of the Netherlands began in 1940, the Frank family went into hiding in July 1942 in concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father, Otto Frank, worked. The hiding place, known as the Secret Annex, sheltered eight people for over two years. During this time, Anne kept a diary that she had received for her 13th birthday, documenting her experiences, thoughts, fears, and hopes. Her writing revealed a remarkably mature and insightful young woman grappling with the challenges of adolescence under extraordinary circumstances. She wrote about her relationships with her family and the others in hiding, her dreams of becoming a writer, and her observations about human nature. In August 1944, the Secret Annex was betrayed to the Gestapo, and its occupants were arrested. Anne and her sister Margot were eventually transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in February or March 1945, just weeks before the camp's liberation. Otto Frank was the only member of the family to survive the Holocaust. After the war, he returned to Amsterdam and was given Anne's diary, which had been saved by Miep Gies, one of the family's helpers. Otto published the diary in 1947 as "Het Achterhuis" (The Secret Annex), later known in English as "The Diary of a Young Girl." The book has been translated into over 70 languages and has sold tens of millions of copies, making it one of the most widely read books in the world. Anne's diary provides a deeply personal and poignant account of the Holocaust and has become a symbol of the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable evil.