Happy Birthday, Anne Frank, Holocaust Diarist

Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 12, 1929, the daughter of Otto Frank and Edith Frank-Holländer and younger sister of Margot Frank.

At the beginning of 1933, Anne and her family fled Germany as the Nazi Party took over. Otto Frank learned of an opportunity to work for a Dutch company that sold pectin, and the family settled in Amsterdam.

Anne and Margot took to their studies with zeal, and gained the respect of their many friends as accomplished students. But this would begin to change on May 10, 1940, when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, and instituted a series of ever more restrictive laws on the Jews.

Two years later, Anne’s sister Margot received a “call-up,” a summons to a German labor camp. In July 1942, the Franks went into hiding in a secret apartment at 263 Prinsengracht, the same building where Otto Frank worked. Eventually four other Dutch Jews would join them: Fritz Pfeffer, and Hermann, Auguste and Peter van Pels. This apartment would come to be known the world over as the “Secret Annex,” thanks to the diary that Anne Frank had received for her 13th birthday roughly a month earlier.

According to Time magazine, one of Anne Frank’s earliest diary entries reads, “I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me.”

Indeed, the plaid-bound volume did become a source of solace to Anne during her adolescence. Her daily musings, reflecting on such common sources of teen angst as romantic crushes and sisterly squabbles, nevertheless showed introspection and literary acuity beyond her years.

Memorable quotes from her diary express hope in the face of terrible adversity: “I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too; I can feel the sufferings of millions; and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

Non-Jewish friends and business associates of Otto Frank smuggled food to the residents of the Secret Annex. The group survived in secret for two years, until an anonymous Dutch informer tipped off the Gestapo, who raided the hiding place on August 4, 1944.

Anne and Margot were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died of typhus in March 1945. Anne’s parents were sent to Auschwitz; the camp was liberated by Russian troops in early January 1945, just days after Anne’s mother had died.

Otto Frank, the only surviving member of the family, returned home, and Miep Gies, one of the Secret Annex’s “helpers” gave him the diary and Anne’s other writings, which she had kept after the raid. Astonished at his daughter’s maturity and insightfulness, Otto Frank printed 1,500 copies of the diary, titling it “Het Achterhuis,” or “The Secret Annex.” Known to American readers as “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” it has since been published in more than 60 languages and has become one of the most influential—and widely read—literary works in history.

The Anne Frank Museum site notes that there are actually several versions of Anne Frank’s diary. Anne herself edited and rewrote several sections, Otto Frank edited the diary before publication and various subsequent editors have restored previously cut sections. In 1998, five loose pages regarding her reflections on her parents’ relationship were discovered.

Anything the young diarist wrote continues to make headlines. In April 2008, experts authenticated a 1937 greeting card discovered by an Amsterdam schoolteacher that was signed by Anne Frank and addressed to one of her close friends, Samme Ledermann.

Miep Gies, the last surviving “helper” and the preserver of Anne Frank’s diary, turned 100 years old in 2008. Venerated the world over for her good works, Gies points out the sacrifices others made during the Holocaust: “so many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work,” she was quoted as saying by The Scotsman.