The Diary Speaks: Anne Frank's Diary Published
1947 · event
Two years after Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen at fifteen, her father published the diary she had kept in hiding. One girl's voice became the memory of six million. Proof that a single preserved story can carry more weight than any monument.
She wanted to be a writer. In March 1944 she heard a radio broadcast from the exiled Dutch government asking people to keep their war diaries, and began rewriting hers for publication, giving the hiding-place inhabitants pseudonyms and editing every page.
Otto Frank, the only one of the eight to survive, spent the rest of his life answering letters from readers. He said he had not truly known his daughter until he read the diary, "and the conclusion is, most parents don't know their children."