Anne Frank (1929-1944)

Just after Hitler came to power in Germany, the Frank family emigrated from Frankfurt to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Anne and her sister, Margot, learned Dutch at the Montessori School. When the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands sat in following the German invasion, the Frank family went underground together with friends on 6 June 1942. These eight people lived close together in a small back building for two years. On 4 August an anonymous person denounced them to the German Security Police in Amsterdam. All eight were imprisoned and at first placed in the Westerbork transit camp. Later they were sent to Auschwitz. At the end of October 1944 Anne and Margot were transferred to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Sick with hunger and tuberculosis, first Margot, and a few days later Anne, died in March 1945.

Otto Frank, their father, survived as the only one of the eight. In 1947 he published Anne’s diary. The diary depicts the family’s two years in hiding in a very touching way. Anne’s diary has since become world famous, has been translated into more than 50 languages, and sold in more than 20 million copies.