Frank was born inFrankfurt, Germany, in 1929. In 1934, when she was four and a half, Frank and her family moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands afterAdolf Hitler and the Nazi Party gained control overGermany. By May 1940, the family was trapped in Amsterdam by theGerman occupation of the Netherlands. Frank lost her German citizenship in 1941 and becamestateless. Despite spending most of her life in the Netherlands and being ade facto Dutch national,[2] she never officially became aDutch citizen. Aspersecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding inrooms concealed behind a bookcase in the building where Frank's father,Otto Frank, worked. The family was arrested two years later by theGestapo on 4 August 1944.
Following their arrest, the Franks were transported toconcentration camps. On 1 November 1944,[3] Anne Frank and her sister,Margot, were transferred fromAuschwitz toBergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died (presumably oftyphus) a few months later. They were estimated by theRed Cross to have died in March, with Dutch authorities setting 31 March as the official date. Later research has alternatively suggested, however, that they may have died in February or early March.
Otto, the onlyHolocaust survivor in the Frank family, returned to Amsterdam afterWorld War II to find that Anne's diary had been saved by his secretaries,Miep Gies andBep Voskuijl. Moved by his daughter's repeated wishes to be an author, Otto Frank published her diary in 1947.[4] It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 asThe Diary of a Young Girl (originallyHet Achterhuis in Dutch,lit.'the back house'; English: The Secret Annex) and has since been translated into over 70 languages.[5] With the publication ofThe Diary of a Young Girl, Anne became one of the most-discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. One of the world's best-known books, it has been the basis for several plays andfilms.
Early life
Anne Frank at the6th Montessori School, 1940Anne Frank watching the wedding of one of her neighbours from the Franks' apartment at Merwedeplein 37 inAmsterdam, Netherlands, in 1941
Frank was born Annelies[6] or Anneliese[7] Marie Frank on 12 June 1929 at theMaingau Red Cross Clinic[8] inFrankfurt, Germany, toEdith (née Holländer) andOtto Heinrich Frank. She had an older sister,Margot.[9] As the Franks wereReform Jews, they did not practise all the customs and traditions of Judaism.[10] They lived in anassimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various religions. Edith and Otto were devoted parents with an interest in scholarly pursuits. They had an extensive library and both parents encouraged the children to read.[11][12]
At the time of Anne's birth, the family lived in a house at Marbachweg 307 in Frankfurt-Eckenheim (today Frankfurt-Dornbusch),[a] where they rented two floors. In 1931, they moved to a house at Ganghoferstraße 24 in a fashionable liberal area of Frankfurt-Ginnheim called theDichterviertel ("Poets' Quarter") that is now also part of Dornbusch. Both houses still exist.[13]
In 1933, afterAdolf Hitler'sNazi Party won thefederal election and Hitler was appointedchancellor of the Reich, Edith Frank and the children went to stay with her mother Rosa Hollander (née Stern) inAachen. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organize the business and arrange accommodation for his family.[14] He began working at theOpekta Works, a company that soldpectin, a fruit extract. Edith travelled back and forth between Aachen and Amsterdam and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in theRivierenbuurt neighbourhood of Amsterdam, where many Jewish-German refugees settled.[15] In November 1933, Edith followed her husband and a month later Margot also moved to Amsterdam.[16] Anne stayed with her grandmother until February, when the entire family reunited in Amsterdam.[17]
The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939.[18] After moving to Amsterdam, Anne and Margot were enrolled in school. Margot went to public school where, despite initial problems with the Dutch language, she became a star pupil. Anne joined the6th Montessori School in 1934 and soon felt at home there, meeting children of her own age, likeHanneli Goslar, who would later become one of her best friends.[19] Twenty-three years later, the school was posthumously renamed after her as the Anne Frank School in 1957.[20][21][22]
In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company, Pectacon, a wholesaler of herbs,pickling salts andmixed spices, used in the production of sausages.[23][24]Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. A Jewish butcher, he had fledOsnabrück with his family.[24] In 1939, Edith Frank's mother Rosa came to live with the Franks and remained with them until her death in January 1942.[25]
In May 1940, Germanyinvaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws. Mandatory registration andsegregation soon followed.[25] Otto Frank tried to arrange for the family to emigrate to the United States—the only destination that seemed to him to be viable[26]—but his visa application was never processed[27] because the US consulate inRotterdam was destroyed byGerman bombing on 14 May 1940, resulting in the loss of all the paperwork there.[28]
After the summer holidays in 1941, Anne learned that she would no longer be allowed to go to the Montessori School, as Jewish children had to attend Jewish schools. From then on, Anne, like her sister Margot, went to theJewish Lyceum [nl] (Joods Lyceum),[29] an exclusive Jewish secondary school in Amsterdam that opened in September that same year.[30]
For her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, Anne received anautograph book,[31] bound with red-and-white checkered cloth[32] and with a small lock on the front. She decided she would use it as a diary,[33] and named it "Kitty". She began writing in it almost immediately. In her entry dated 20 June 1942, she lists many of the restrictions placed upon the lives of theDutch Jewish population.[34]
In mid-1942, the systematic deportation of Jews from the Netherlands began.[35] Otto and Edith Frank planned to go into hiding with the children on 16 July 1942, but when Margot received a call-up notice from theCentral Office for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung) on 5 July, ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp, they were forced to initiate their plan ten days earlier than they had originally intended.[36] Shortly before going into hiding, Anne gave her friend and next-door neighbour Toosje Kupers a book, a tea set and a tin of marbles. On 6 July, the Frank family left a note for the Kupers, asking them to take care of their cat Moortje. As the Associated Press reports, Kupers said Anne told her: "'I'm worried about my marbles, because I'm scared they might fall into the wrong hands. Could you keep them for me for a little while?'"[37]
Life in the Secret Annex
Canal-side façade of the former Opekta building (center-left) onPrinsengracht canal. The Secret Annex (Achterhuis) is at the rear in an enclosed courtyard.
On Monday morning 6 July, the Frank family moved into their hiding place,[38] a three-story space entered from a landing above the Opekta offices on thePrinsengracht, where some of Otto Frank's most trusted employees would be their helpers. The hiding place became known as theAchterhuis in Dutch (translated as Secret Annex in English editions of the diary). The Franks' apartment was left in a state of disarray to create the impression that they had left suddenly, and Otto left a note that hinted they were going to Switzerland. As Jews were not allowed to use public transport, Otto, Edith and Anne walked several kilometres from their home. Margot cycled to the Prinsengracht withMiep Gies.[39][40] The door to the Secret Annex was later covered by a bookcase to ensure that it remained undiscovered.[41]
Victor Kugler,Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl were the only employees who knew of the people in hiding. Along with Gies' husbandJan Gies and Voskuijl's father Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, they were the "helpers" for the duration of confinement. As the only connection between the outside world and the occupants of the house, the helpers kept the occupants informed of war news and political developments. They catered to all the Franks' needs, ensured their safety and supplied them with food, a task that grew more difficult over time. Anne wrote of their dedication and efforts to boost morale within the household during the most dangerous times. All were aware that, if caught, they could face the death penalty for sheltering Jews.[42]
Reconstruction of the bookcase that covered the entrance to the Secret Annex, in theAnne Frank House in AmsterdamModel of the former Opekta front building (left) and rear building / Secret Annex (right) where Anne Frank stayed
On 13 July 1942, the Franks were joined by the Van Pels family, made up of Hermann, Auguste and 16-year-old Peter; then in November byFritz Pfeffer, a dentist and friend of the family. Anne wrote of her pleasure at having new people to talk to, but tensions quickly developed within the group forced to live in such confined conditions. After sharing her room with Pfeffer, she found him insufferable and resented his intrusion,[43] and she clashed with Auguste van Pels, whom she regarded as foolish. She regarded Hermann van Pels and Pfeffer as selfish, particularly regarding the amount of food they consumed.[44]
Sometime later, after first dismissing the shy and awkward Peter van Pels, she recognized a kinship with him and the two entered a romance. She received her first kiss from him, but her infatuation with him began to wane as she questioned whether her feelings for him were genuine or resulted from their shared confinement.[45] Anne also formed a close bond with each of the helpers, and Otto Frank later recalled that she had anticipated their daily visits with impatient enthusiasm. He observed that Anne's closest friendship was with Bep Voskuijl, "the young typist... the two of them often stood whispering in the corner".[46]
The young diarist
In her writing, Anne examined her relationships with the members of her family and the strong differences in each of their personalities. She was closest emotionally to her father, who later said: "I got on better with Anne than with Margot, who was more attached to her mother. The reason for that may have been that Margot rarely showed her feelings and didn't need as much support because she didn't suffer from mood swings as much as Anne did."[47]
The Frank sisters formed a closer relationship than before they went into hiding, although Anne sometimes expressed jealousy towards Margot, particularly when members of the household criticized Anne for lacking Margot's gentle and placid nature. As Anne began to mature, the sisters were able to confide in each other. In her entry of 12 January 1944, Frank wrote, "Margot's much nicer... She's not nearly so catty these days and is becoming a real friend. She no longer thinks of me as a little baby who doesn't count."[48]
Amsterdam from theWesterkerk with partial view of the Secret Annex (just up from the dark gray building on the near-right corner, just right of the block-like square gray roof of the second building from the corner) with a light tan wall and a single small window
Anne frequently wrote of her difficult relationship with her mother, and her ambivalence towards her. On 7 November 1942, she described her "contempt" for her mother and her inability to "confront her with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hard-heartedness" before concluding, "She's not a mother to me."[49] Later, however, as she revised her diary, Anne felt ashamed of her harsh attitude, writing: "Anne, is it really you who mentioned hate, oh Anne, how could you?"[50] She came to understand that their differences resulted from misunderstandings that were as much her fault as her mother's and saw that she had added unnecessarily to her mother's suffering. With this realization, Anne began to treat her mother with a degree of tolerance and respect.[51]
The Frank sisters each hoped to return to school as soon as they were able and continued with their studies while in hiding. Margot took an 'Elementary Latin' courseby correspondence in Bep Voskuijl's name and received high marks.[52] Most of Anne's time was spent reading and studying, and she regularly wrote and edited (after March 1944) her diary entries. In addition to providing a narrative of events as they occurred, she wrote about her feelings, beliefs, dreams and ambitions, subjects she felt she could not discuss with anyone. As her confidence in her writing grew and she began to mature, she wrote of more abstract subjects such as her belief in God and how she defined human nature.[53]
Anne aspired to become a journalist, writing in her diary on 5 April 1944:
I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that's what I want! I know I can write ..., but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent ...
And if I don't have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can't imagine living like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! ...
I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that's inside me!
When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that's a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?[54]
Anne continued writing regularly until her last entry on 1 August 1944.[55]
Arrest
A partial reconstruction of thebarracks in the Westerbork transit camp where Anne Frank was housed from August to September 1944
On the morning of 4 August 1944, the Secret Annex was stormed by a group of German uniformed police (Grüne Polizei) led bySS-OberscharführerKarl Silberbauer of theSicherheitsdienst.[56] The Franks, Van Pelses, and Pfeffer were taken toRSHA headquarters, where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5 August, they were transferred to theHuis van Bewaring (House of Detention), an overcrowded prison on theWeteringschans. Two days later they were transported to theWesterbork transit camp, through which more than 100,000 Jews, mostly Dutch and German, had passed. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and sent to the Punishment Barracks forhard labour.[57]
Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested and jailed at the penal camp for enemies of the regime atAmersfoort, in the province of Utrecht. Kleiman was released after seven weeks, but Kugler was held in various Dutch concentration and prison camps until the war's end.[58] Miep Gies was questioned and threatened by the Security Police but not detained. Bep Voskuijl managed to escape with a few documents that would have incriminated their black market contacts. During the following days, the two secretaries returned to the Secret Annex and found Anne's papers strewn on the floor. They collected them, as well as several family photograph albums, and Gies resolved to return them to Anne after the war. On 7 August 1944, Gies attempted to facilitate release of the prisoners by confronting Silberbauer and offering him money to intervene, but he refused.[59]
Source of discovery
There are varying theories as to how the Secret Annex inhabitants were discovered.
In 2015,Flemish journalist Jeroen De Bruyn and Joop van Wijk, Bep Voskuijl's youngest son, wrote a biography[b] in which they alleged that Bep's younger sister (their aunt) Nelly (1923–2001) could have betrayed them. Nelly was a Nazi collaborator from the age of 19 to 23,[60] and had run away to Austria with a Nazi officer but returned to Amsterdam in 1943 after the relationship ended.[61] Nelly had been critical of Bep and their father, Johannes Voskuijl, for helping the Jews.[62] Johannes had constructed the bookcase covering the entrance to the hiding place and remained as an unofficial watchman of the hideout.[61] In one of their quarrels, Nelly shouted to them, "Go to your Jews!"[63] Karl Josef Silberbauer, theSS officer who made the arrest, was reported to have said that the informer had "the voice of a young woman."[64][65]
In 2016, theAnne Frank House published new research pointing to an investigation over ration-card fraud rather than betrayal as a possible explanation for the raid that led to the Franks' arrest.[66] The report also stated that other activities in the building may have led authorities there, including activities of Otto Frank's company; however, it did not rule out betrayal.[67]
A 2018 book suggested that the source of the Secret Annex discovery wasAns van Dijk, a Dutch Jew who betrayed at least 145 fellow Jews to the Gestapo, as a potential candidate for the informant. Dutch resistance fighter Gerard Kremer, who worked as a caretaker at an office building requisitioned by theSicherheitsdienst, apparently witnessed Van Dijk visiting the building in August 1944 and overheard her talking with her intelligence superiors about Prinsengracht, where the Franks were hiding. However, another book examining this possibility noted that many of Van Dijk's victims had lived in or near Prinsengracht.[68]
In January 2022, a team of investigators, including former FBI agent Vince Pankoke, proposedArnold van den Bergh, a member of Amsterdam'sJewish Council who died in 1950, as the suspected informant.[69][70] The investigators postulated that Van den Bergh gave up the Franks to save his own family. The investigation is chronicled inRosemary Sullivan's English-language book,The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation.[71] Evidence was also claimed to have been found that Anne Frank's father later knew this but did not reveal it after the war.[69] According to theBBC, these investigators "spent six years using modern investigative techniques to crack the 'cold case...'"[69] However, according toThe New York Times, several World WarII and Holocaust scholars have doubted the investigators' methods and conclusions, calling the evidence "far too thin".[72]
The Dutch language version ofThe Betrayal of Anne Frank received criticism from scholars Bart van der Boom, David Barnouw and Johannes Houwink ten Cate shortly after its publication. The publisher, Ambo Anthos, apologized via internal email, saying that they should have been more critical of the book before publishing it and that they were delaying the decision to print another run of it until the researchers answered questions about the book that had arisen.[73][74][75] In response, Pieter van Twisk, one of the investigators referenced in the book, said that he was "perplexed by the email" and that they had never claimed to have uncovered the complete truth.[75] When a group of World WarII experts and historians published their analysis of the book's historical sources and conclusions in March 2022, they contested the central claim that the Amsterdam Jewish council even had a list of Jewish hiding places from which Van den Bergh could draw, concluding that the accusation of Van den Bergh was based on weak assumptions and lack of historical knowledge.[76] As a result, Ambo Anthos recalled the Dutch language version of the book.[77][78]
In August 2022, Dutch researcher Natasha Gerson published an 80-page report analyzing the annotations and sources inThe Betrayal of Anne Frank, arguing that the theory in the book was not only flawed but also the product of source fraud.[79][80][81] The report concluded that Otto Frank's recorded agenda, as well as a letter he received from helper Johannes Kleiman and several other statements, were proven to be distorted to suit the outcome in the book. Several negative claims about Van den Bergh had Anton Schepers, a Nazi collaborator who was twice diagnosed as insane and who had taken over Van den Bergh's notary practice, as their only source. Included among them was the claim of Nazi contacts and a commission of 200,000guilders paid on the sale ofJacques Goudstikker's art business. AlthoughThe Betrayal of Anne Frank stated that Van den Bergh enjoyed the protection of two high-up Nazis, the report said that the cold-case team and the book's author had omitted statements that the named Nazis had not known him.[82] Previously postponed plans to publish a German translation of Sullivan's book were cancelled soon afterward.[80]
Deportation and life in captivity
On 3 September 1944,[c] the Secret Annex group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to theAuschwitz concentration camp and arrived after a three-day journey. On the same train wasBloeme Evers-Emden, an Amsterdam native who had befriended Margot and Anne in theJewish Lyceum [nl] in 1941.[83] Bloeme saw Anne, Margot and their mother regularly in Auschwitz.[84] She was interviewed for her remembrances of the Frank women in Auschwitz in the television documentaryThe Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (1988) by Dutch filmmakerWilly Lindwer[85] and in the BBC documentaryAnne Frank Remembered (1995).[86]
Upon arrival at Auschwitz, theSS forcibly split the men from the women and children, and thus Otto Frank was separated from his family. Those deemed able to work were admitted into the camp; those deemed unfit for labour were immediately killed. Of the 1,019 passengers, 549—including all children younger than 15—were sent directly to thegas chambers. Anne, who had turned 15 three months earlier, was one of the youngest spared from her transport. Soon becoming aware that most people were gassed upon arrival, she never learned that the entire group from the Secret Annex had survived this selection. She reasoned that her father, in his mid-fifties and not particularly robust, had been killed immediately after they were separated.[87]
With the other women and girls not selected for immediate death, Frank was forced to strip naked to be disinfected, her head shaved and her armtattooed with an identifying number. By day, the women were used as slave labor and Anne was forced to haul rocks and dig rolls of sod; by night, they were crammed into overcrowded barracks. Some witnesses later testified that Anne became withdrawn and tearful when she saw children being led to the gas chambers. Others reported that more often, she displayed strength and courage. Her gregarious and confident nature allowed her to obtain extra breadrations for her mother, her sister and herself. Disease was rampant; before long, Anne's skin became badly infected byscabies. The Frank sisters were moved into an infirmary, which was in a state of constant darkness and infested with rats and mice. Edith Frank stopped eating, saving every morsel of food for her daughters and passing her rations to them through a hole she made at the bottom of the infirmary wall.[88]
In October 1944, the Frank women were scheduled to join a transport to the Liebaulabor camp inLower Silesia. Bloeme Evers-Emden was scheduled to be on this transport, but Anne was prohibited from going because of her scabies and her mother and sister opted to stay with her. Bloeme went on without them.[86]
On 28 October, selections began for women to be relocated toBergen-Belsen. More than 8,000 women, including Anne and Margot, and Auguste van Pels, were transported. Edith Frank was left behind and died of disease, starvation and exhaustion.[89][90]
Tents were erected at Bergen-Belsen to accommodate the influx of prisoners; and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased rapidly. Anne was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar andNanette Blitz, who were also confined in the camp. Blitz had been moved from a part of camp called the Sternlager to the same section of the camp as Anne on 5 December 1944,[91] while Goslar had been held in the Sternlager since February 1944.[92] Both women survived the war and later discussed the conversations they had with Anne—Blitz in person[93] and Goslar through a barbed wire fence.[94] Goslar later estimated their meetings had taken place in late January or early February 1945.[95]
Blitz described Anne as bald, emaciated and shivering,[93] and remarked that "the shock of seeing her in this emaciated state was indescribable". Anne told her that she hoped to write a book based on her diary when the war ended.[96] Goslar noted that Auguste van Pels was with Anne and Margot and that he was caring for Margot, who was severely ill,[95] although she also recalled she did not see Margot because she was too weak to leave her bunk.[97] Blitz, however, stated she met with both the Frank sisters.[98] Anne told both Blitz and Goslar that she believed her parents were dead and for that reason she did not wish to live any longer.[98][97]
Anne Frank died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February or March 1945. Although the specific cause is unknown, there is evidence to suggest that she died from atyphus epidemic that spread through the camp, killing 17,000 prisoners.[99]Gena Turgel, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen who knew Anne at the camp, told the British newspaperThe Sun: "Her bed was around the corner from me. She was delirious, terrible, burning up." She also mentioned that she had brought Anne water with which to wash.[100] Turgel, who worked in the camp hospital, added that the epidemic took a terrible toll on the inmates: "The people were dying like flies—in the hundreds. Reports used to come in—500 people who died. Three hundred? We said, 'Thank God, only 300.'"[100] Other diseases, includingtyphoid fever, were rampant.[101]
Witnesses later testified that Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock, and that Anne died a day after Margot.[102][103] The dates of Margot's and Anne's deaths were not recorded. It was long thought that their deaths occurred only a few weeks beforeBritish troops liberated the camp on 15 April 1945,[104] but research in 2015 indicated that they may have died as early as February.[105] Among other evidence, witnesses recalled that the sisters displayed typhus symptoms by 7 February,[1][106][107][108] and Dutch health authorities reported that most untreated typhus victims died within twelve days of their first symptoms.[105] Additionally, Hanneli Goslar stated her father,Hans Goslar [de], died one or two weeks after their first meeting;[109] and it is known that he died on 25 February 1945.[110]
After the war, it was estimated that only 5,000 of the 107,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands between 1942 and 1944 survived the war. An estimated 30,000 Jews remained in the Netherlands, many aided by theDutch underground; and of those, approximately two-thirds survived.[111]
Otto Frank survived his internment in Auschwitz. After the war ended, he returned to Amsterdam in June 1945, where he was sheltered by Jan and Miep Gies as he attempted to locate his family. He learned of the death of his wife, Edith, during his journey to Amsterdam,[112] but remained hopeful that his daughters had survived. After several weeks, however, he discovered that Margot and Anne had also died. He attempted to determine the fates of his daughters' friends and learned that many had been killed.Sanne Ledermann, often mentioned in Anne's diary, had been gassed along with her parents; but her sister,Barbara Ledermann, a close friend of Margot's, had survived.[113] Several of the Frank sisters' school friends had survived, as had the extended families of Otto and Edith Frank, as they had fled Germany during the mid-1930s, with individual family members settling in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.[114]
Het Achterhuis (literally, "the rear house"), the first Dutch edition of Anne Frank's diary, published in 1947, later translated into English asThe Diary of a Young Girl
In July 1945, after the sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper, who were with Anne and Margot Frank in Bergen-Belsen,[115] confirmed the deaths of the sisters, Miep Gies gave Anne's father her notebooks (including the red-and-white checkered diary) and a bundle of loose notes that she and Bep Voskuijl had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realized Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding. In his memoir, he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognising the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter. He saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting: "For me it was a revelation... I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings... She had kept all these feelings to herself."[116]
Anne's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts. She wrote several times that she would never allow anyone to read it. She candidly described her life, her family and companions and their situation, while beginning to recognise her ambition to write fiction for publication. In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast byGerrit Bolkestein—a member of the Dutchgovernment in exile, based inLondon—who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people's oppression under German occupation.[117] On hearing Bolkestein's mention of the publication of letters and diaries, Anne decided to submit her work when the time came.[118]
She began editing her writing, removing some sections and rewriting others, with a view to publication. Her original notebook was supplemented by additional notebooks andloose-leaf sheets of paper. She created pseudonyms for the members of the household and the helpers.[119] The Van Pels family became Hermann, Petronella, and Peter van Daan;[120] Fritz Pfeffer became Albert Düssell.[121] In this edited version, she addressed each entry to "Kitty", a fictional character inCissy van Marxveldt'sJoop ter Heul novels that Anne enjoyed reading.[122]
Moved by Anne's repeated wish to be an author, Otto Frank began to consider having it published.[123] To produce the first version for publication, he used Anne's original diary, known as "version A", and her edited version, known as "version B." Although he restored the true identities of his own family, he retained all the other pseudonyms.[124] He gave the diary to the historianAnnie Romein-Verschoor, but she was unsuccessful in having it published. She then gave it to her husbandJan Romein, and he wrote an article about it titledKinderstem (A Child's Voice), which was published in the newspaperHet Parool (The Watchword) on 3 April 1946. He wrote that the diary, "stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence atNuremberg put together."[125] His article attracted attention from publishers, and the diary was published in the Netherlands asHet Achterhuis (The Annex, literally, "the back house") in 1947,[126] followed by five more printings by 1950.[127]
The diary was first published in Germany and France in 1950, and in the United Kingdom in 1952 after being rejected by several publishers. The first American edition, published in 1952 under the titleAnne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, was positively reviewed. The book was also successful in France and Germany. In the United Kingdom, however, it failed to attract an audience and by 1953 was out of print. Its most noteworthy success was in Japan, where it received critical acclaim and sold more than 100,000 copies in its first edition; and Anne was quickly identified there as an important cultural figure who represented the destruction of youth during the war.[128]
A play byFrances Goodrich and Albert Hackett based on the diary premiered in New York City on 5 October 1955 and later won aPulitzer Prize for Drama. It was followed by the filmThe Diary of Anne Frank (1959), a critical and commercial success. BiographerMelissa Müller later wrote that the dramatization had "contributed greatly to the romanticizing, sentimentalizing and universalizing of Anne's story".[129] Over the years the popularity of the diary grew, and in many schools, particularly in the United States, it was included as part of the curriculum, introducing Anne to new generations of readers.[130]
Cornelis Suijk—a former director of theAnne Frank Foundation and president of theU.S. Center for Holocaust Education Foundation—announced in 1999 that he had five pages of the diary which had been removed by Otto Frank before publication. Suijk claimed that Frank gave these pages to him shortly before he died in 1980. The missing entries contain critical remarks by Anne about her parents' strained marriage and discuss her lack of affection for her mother.[131] Some controversy ensued when Suijk claimed publishing rights over the five pages. He intended to sell them to raise money for his foundation, but the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, the manuscript's formal owner, demanded the pages be handed over. In 2000 theDutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science agreed to donate US$300,000 to Suijk's foundation, and the pages were returned in 2001. Since then, they have been included in new editions of the diary.[132]
Reception
The diary has been praised for its literary merits. Commenting on Anne's writing style, the dramatistMeyer Levin commended her for "sustaining the tension of a well-constructed novel",[133] and was so impressed by the quality of her work that he collaborated with Otto Frank on a dramatization of the diary shortly after its publication.[134] Levin became obsessed with Anne, which he wrote about in his autobiographyThe Obsession. The poetJohn Berryman called the book a unique depiction, not merely of adolescence but of the "conversion of a child into a person as it is happening in a precise, confident, economical style stunning in its honesty".[135]
In her introduction to the diary's first American edition,Eleanor Roosevelt described it as "one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read".[136]John F. Kennedy discussed Anne in a 1961 speech, and observed: "Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank."[137][138] In the same year, the Soviet writerIlya Ehrenburg wrote of her that "one voice speaks for six million—the voice not of a sage or a poet but of an ordinary little girl".[139]
As Anne's stature as both a writer and humanist has grown, she has been discussed specifically as a symbol ofthe Holocaust and more broadly as a representative of persecution.[140]Hillary Clinton, in her acceptance speech for anElie Wiesel Humanitarian Award in 1994, read from Anne's diary and spoke of her "awakening us to the folly of indifference and the terrible toll it takes on our young", which Clinton related to contemporary events inSarajevo,Somalia andRwanda.[141]
After receiving a humanitarian award from the Anne Frank Foundation in 1994,Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd inJohannesburg, saying he had read Anne's diary while in prison and "derived much encouragement from it". He likened her struggle against Nazism to his struggle againstapartheid, drawing a parallel between the two philosophies: "Because these beliefs are patently false, and because they were, and will always be, challenged by the likes of Anne Frank, they are bound to fail."[142] Also in 1994,Václav Havel said, "Anne Frank's legacy is very much alive and it can address us fully," in commenting on the political and social changes occurring at the time in former Eastern Bloc countries.[137]
Fellow Holocaust survivorPrimo Levi suggested that Anne was frequently identified as a single representative of the millions of people who suffered and died as she did because "[o]ne single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live."[137] Miep Gies expressed a similar thought in her closing message in Müller's biography of Anne, though she attempted to dispel what she felt was a growing misconception that "Anne symbolizes the six million victims of the Holocaust," and commented: "Anne's life and death were her own individual fate, an individual fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot, and should not, stand for the many individuals whom the Nazis robbed of their lives... But her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust."[143]
Otto Frank spent the remainder of his life as custodian of his daughter's legacy, remarking: "It's a strange role. In the normal family relationship, it is the child of the famous parent who has the honor and the burden of continuing the task. In my case the role is reversed." He recalled his publisher's explanation of why he thought the diary has been so widely read with the comment that "he said that the diary encompasses so many areas of life that each reader can find something that moves him personally."[144] Simon Wiesenthal expressed a similar sentiment when he said that the diary had raised more widespread awareness of the Holocaust than had been achieved during theNuremberg Trials, because "people identified with this child. This was the impact of the Holocaust, this was a family like my family, like your family and so you could understand this."[145]
In June 1999,Time magazine published a special edition titled "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century". Anne Frank was selected as one of the "Heroes & Icons", and the writer Roger Rosenblatt described her legacy with the comment: "The passions the book ignites suggest that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism, girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world—the moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live and question and hope for the future of human beings." Noting that although her courage and pragmatism were admired, her ability to analyze herself and the quality of her writing were the key components of her appeal; and thus "[t]he reason for her immortality was basically literary. She was an extraordinarily good writer, for any age, and the quality of her work seemed a direct result of a ruthlessly honest disposition".[146]
Denials of authenticity and legal action
After the diary became widely known in the late 1950s, various allegations against its veracity and contents appeared, with the earliest published criticisms occurring in Sweden and Norway.[147] In 1957,Fria ord (Free Words), the magazine of the Swedishneofascist organizationNational League of Sweden, published an article by Danish author and critic Harald Nielsen, who had previously written antisemitic articles about the Danish-Jewish authorGeorg Brandes.[148] Among other things, his article claimed that the diary had been written by Meyer Levin.[149]
In 1958, at a performance ofThe Diary of Anne Frank in Vienna,Simon Wiesenthal was challenged by a group of protesters who asserted that Anne Frank had never existed, and challenged Wiesenthal to prove her existence by finding the man who had arrested her. Wiesenthal indeed began searching for Karl Silberbauer and found him in 1963. When interviewed, Silberbauer admitted his role and identified Anne from a photograph as one of the people he arrested. Silberbauer provided a full account of events, even recalling emptying a briefcase full of papers onto the floor. His statement corroborated the version of events that had previously been presented by witnesses such as Otto Frank.[150]
In 1959, Otto Frank took legal action inLübeck against Lothar Stielau, a school teacher and formerHitler Youth member who published a school paper describing the diary as a forgery. The complaint was extended to include Heinrich Buddegerg, who wrote a letter in support of Stielau that was published in a Lübeck newspaper. The court examined the diary in 1960 and authenticated the handwriting as matching that in letters known to have been written by Anne Frank, declaring the diary to be genuine. Stielau recanted his earlier statement, and Otto Frank did not pursue the case further.[149]
In 1976, Otto Frank took action against Heinz Roth of Frankfurt, who also stated that the diary was a forgery, publishing pamphlets about that. The judge ruled that if Roth were to publish any further statements, he would be subjected to a fine of 500,000Deutsche marks and a six-month jail sentence. Roth appealed the court's decision, but he died in 1978 and after a year his appeal was rejected.[149]
Otto Frank mounted a lawsuit in 1976 against a third promoter of disbelief in the diary's authenticity, Ernst Römer, who distributed a pamphlet titled "The Diary of Anne Frank, Bestseller, A Lie". When a man named Edgar Geiss distributed the same pamphlet in the courtroom, he too was prosecuted. Römer was fined 1,500 Deutsche marks,[149] and Geiss was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. The sentence of Geiss was reduced on appeal, however, and the case was eventually dropped following a subsequent appeal because the time limit for filing a libel case had expired.[151]
With Otto Frank's death in 1980, the original diary, including letters and loose sheets, was willed to the Dutch Institute for War Documentation,[152] which commissioned a forensic study of the diary through the Netherlands Ministry of Justice in 1986. They examined the handwriting against known examples and found a match. They also determined that paper, glue and ink were readily available during the time the diary was said to have been written. They concluded that the diary was authentic, and their findings were published in what has become known as the "Critical Edition" of the diary.[153] In 1990, the Hamburg Regional Court confirmed the diary's authenticity.[154]
In 1991, twoHolocaust deniers—Robert Faurisson andSiegfried Verbeke—produced a booklet titledThe Diary of Anne Frank: A Critical Approach, in which they revived the allegation that Otto Frank wrote the diary. Purported evidence, as before, included several contradictions in the diary: that the prose style and handwriting were not those of a teenager, and that hiding in the Secret Annex would have been impossible.[155] In 1993, theAnne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Fonds (Foundation) in Basel filed a civil lawsuit to prohibit further distribution of Faurisson and Verbeke's booklet in the Netherlands. In 1998, the Amsterdam District Court ruled in favor of the claimants, forbade any further denial of the authenticity of the diary and unsolicited distribution of publications to that effect, and imposed a penalty of 25,000 guilders per infringement.[156]
Censored sections
Since the original publication of the diary, several sections of Anne's diaries that were initially edited out have been revealed and included in new editions.[157] These contain passages relating to her sexuality, exploration of her genitalia and thoughts on menstruation.[158][159] Following the conclusion of an ownership dispute in 2001, new editions have also incorporated pages removed by Otto Frank prior to publication that contain critical remarks about her parents' strained marriage and discuss her difficult relationship with her mother.[131][132] Two additional pages that Anne had pasted over with brown paper were deciphered in 2018, and contained an attempt to explain sex education and a handful of "dirty" jokes.[159][160]
Legacy
Sculpted byPieter d'Hont (1959) inUtrecht, NetherlandsPeople waiting in line in front of the Anne Frank House entrance in Amsterdam
On 3 May 1957, a group of Dutch citizens, including Otto Frank, established the Anne Frank Foundation (Anne Frank Stichting) to rescue the Prinsengracht building from demolition and to make it accessible to the public. TheAnne Frank House opened on 3 May 1960, consisting of the Opekta warehouse and offices and the Secret Annex—all unfurnished so visitors can walk freely through the rooms.[161]
The House provides information via the internet and offers exhibitions. From the small room that was once home to Peter van Pels, a walkway connects the building to its neighbours, also purchased by the Foundation. These other buildings are used to house the diary, as well as rotating exhibits that chronicle aspects of the Holocaust and more contemporary examinations of racial intolerance around the world.[162] One of Amsterdam's main tourist attractions, it received an average of 1.2 million visitors between 2011 and 2020.[163]
In 1963, Otto Frank and his second wife,Elfriede Geiringer-Markovits, set up the Anne Frank Fonds as acharitable foundation, based inBasel, Switzerland. Upon his death, Otto willed the diary's copyright to the Fonds, on the provision that the first 80,000Swiss francs in income to it each year was to be distributed to his heirs. The Anne Frank Fonds represents the Frank family and administers the rights,inter alia, to the writings of Anne and Otto Frank and the letters of the Frank family. The Fonds educates young people against racism, and loaned some of Anne's papers to theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington for an exhibition in 2003. Its annual report that year outlined its efforts to contribute on a global level, with support for projects in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.[164]
In 1997, theAnne Frank Educational Centre (Jugendbegegnungsstätte Anne Frank) was opened in the Dornbusch neighbourhood of Frankfurt, where Anne lived with her family until 1934. The centre is "a place where both young people and adults can learn about the history of National Socialism and discuss its relevance to today".[165]
The Merwedeplein apartment, where the Frank family lived from 1933 until 1942, remained privately owned until the 2000s. After featuring in a television documentary, the building—in a serious state of disrepair—was purchased by a Dutch housing corporation.[166] Aided by photographs taken by the Frank family and descriptions in letters written by Anne, it was restored to its 1930s appearance. Teresien da Silva of the Anne Frank House and Frank's cousin, Bernhard "Buddy" Elias, contributed to the restoration project, which opened in 2005. Each year, a writer who is unable to write freely in the writer's own country is selected for a year-long tenancy, during which the writer resides and writes in the apartment. The first writer selected was the Algerian novelist and poet El-Mahdi Acherchour.[162]
Anne Frank is included as one of the topics in theCanon of the Netherlands, which was prepared by a committee headed byFrits van Oostrom and presented to the Minister of Education, Culture and Science,Maria van der Hoeven, in 2006. The Canon is a list of fifty topics that aims to provide a chronological summary of Dutch history to be taught in primary schools and the first two years of secondary school in the Netherlands. A revised version, which still includes Anne as one of the topics, was presented to the Dutch government on 3 October 2007[167] and approved in 2020.[168]
In June 2007, "Buddy" Elias donated some 25,000 family documents to the Anne Frank House. Among the artefacts are Frank's family photographs taken in Germany and the Netherlands and the letter Otto Frank sent his mother in 1945, informing her that his wife and daughters had perished in Nazi concentration camps.[169]
In November 2007, theAnne Frank tree—a horse-chestnut tree that Anne could see from the Annex and later named after her—was by then infected with a fungal disease affecting the trunk and scheduled to be cut down to prevent it from falling on the surrounding buildings. Dutch economistArnold Heertje said about the tree: "This is not just any tree. The Anne Frank tree is bound up with the persecution of the Jews."[170] The Tree Foundation, a group of tree conservationists, started a civil case to stop the felling of thehorse-chestnut, which received international media attention. A Dutch court ordered city officials and conservationists to explore alternatives and come to a solution.[171] The parties built a steel construction that was expected to prolong the life of the tree up to 15 years.[170] However, only three years later, on 23 August 2010, gale-force winds blew down the tree.[172]
The only known film footage of Anne Frank herself comes from a silent 20-second film of her next-door neighbour's wedding, in which she is seen leaning out of a second-floor window in an attempt to better view the bride and groom, at the nine-second mark. The couple, who survived the war, gave the film to the Anne Frank House museum, which has posted it toYouTube.[178]
In 1999,Time named Anne Frank among the heroes and icons of the 20th century on its listThe Most Important People of the Century, stating: "With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human dignity".[146]Philip Roth called her the "lost little daughter" ofFranz Kafka.[179]Madame Tussauds wax museum unveiled an exhibit featuring a likeness of Anne Frank in 2012.[180] Asteroid5535 Annefrank was named in her honour in 1995, after its discovery in 1942.[181] In 2009,UNESCO added the diary and other writings of Anne Frank in to itsMemory of the World International Register, listing documentary heritage of global importance.[182]
Byron Gómez Chavarría, mural of Anne Frank with birds and handprints of children (2017), Anne Frankschool, Utrecht, Netherlands, 2020
As of 2018, there are over 270 schools named after Anne Frank worldwide. A hundred of them are in Germany, 89 in France, 45 in Italy, 17 in the Netherlands (among them the6th Montessori School in Amsterdam that Anne herself attended until 1941), four in Brazil, four in the United States (among them theAnne Frank Inspire Academy), two in Bulgaria and one each in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, Spain, Hungary, Israel, Nepal, Uruguay and Sweden.[183] By 2024 there were 18 schools in Mexico named after her.[184][185]
In 2020, the first of a series of Anne Frank Children's Human Rights Memorials was placed adjacent to a high school in Maaleh, Adumim, outside of Jerusalem.[186] In 2021, the second memorial was unveiled in Antigua, Guatemala,[187] and another inBuenos Aires in 2024.[188] In 2023, however, a plan to rename a daycare centre inTangerhütte, Germany, named for Anne Frank since 1970, was met with international outcry and eventually dropped.[189][190]
On 25 June 2022, a slideshowGoogle Doodle was dedicated in honour of Anne Frank marking the 75th anniversary of the publication of her diary.[191]
Anne Frank Children's Human Rights Memorial in Antigua, Guatemala
^Dornbusch was created in 1946 out of parts of Eckenheim and Ginnheim.
^Bep Voskuijl, het zwijgen voorbij: een biografie van de jongste helper van het Achterhuis,ISBN978-9035143098 (Bep Voskuijl, the Silence is Over: A Biography of the Youngest Helper of the Secret Annex)
^Westra et al. 2004, p. 196, includes a reproduction of part of the transport list showing the names of each of the Frank family.
^"Anne Frankschool in Amsterdam".IJmuider Courant (in Dutch). 26 May 1957. Archived fromthe original on 11 March 2023.Het Anne Frank-comité dat zich in november 1956 met een oproep tot het Nederlandse volk en tot de gemeentelijke autoriteiten van Amsterdam had gericht met het verzoek het te steunen in zijn streven om tot een blijvende herinnering aan Anne Frank te komen, heeft van Amsterdams wethouder van Onderwijs, mr. A. de Roos, de mededeling ontvangen dat B. en W. besloten hebben de naam van de Montesorrischool in de Niersstraat, waar van Anne Frank zes jaren leerlinge was, te wijzigen in „Anne Frankschool".
^Broek, Gertjan (December 2016)."August 4, 1944"(PDF). Anne Frank House.Archived(PDF) from the original on 15 December 2017. Retrieved19 December 2016.
Frank, Anne (1995) [1947].Frank, Otto H.; Pressler, Mirjam (eds.).Het Achterhuis [The Diary of a Young Girl – The Definitive Edition] (in Dutch). Massotty, Susan (translation).Doubleday.ISBN0553296981; this edition, a new translation, includes material excluded from the earlier edition.
Frank, Anne (1989).The Diary of Anne Frank, The Critical Edition. Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation. New York: Doubleday.ISBN978-0385240239.
Frank, Anne; Holmer, Per (2005).Anne Franks dagbok : den oavkortade originalutgåvan : anteckningar från gömstället 12 juni 1942 – 1 augusti 1944 [Anne Frank's Diary: The Unabridged Original Edition: Notes From the Hiding Place] (in Swedish). Stockholm: Norstedt.ISBN978-9113014029.
Konig, Nanette (2018).Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor, Classmate of Anne Frank. Amsterdam Publishers.ISBN978-9492371614.
Rosow, La Vergne (1996).Light 'n Lively Reads for ESL, Adult, and Teen Readers: A Thematic Bibliography. Englewood, Colo: Libraries Unlimited. p. 156.ISBN978-1563083655.
van Wijk-Voskuijl, Joop; De Bruyn, Jeroen (2023).The Last Secret of the Secret Annex: The Untold Story of Anne Frank, Her Silent Protector, and a Family Betrayal. New York: Simon and Schuster.ISBN978-1982198213.
Verhoeven, Rian (2019).Anne Frank was niet alleen. Het Merwedeplein 1933–1945. Amsterdam: Prometheus.ISBN978-9044630411.
Westra, Hans; Metselaar, Menno; Van Der Rol, Ruud; Stam, Dineke (2004).Inside Anne Frank's House: An Illustrated Journey Through Anne's World. Woodstock: Overlook Duckworth.ISBN978-1585676286.
Barnauw, David; van der Stroom, Gerrold (25 April 2003)."Who Betrayed Anne Frank?"(PDF). Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Amsterdam. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 31 March 2010. Retrieved3 September 2016.
Marcuse, Harold (7 August 2002)."Lessons from The Diary of Anne Frank".history.ucsb.edu. University of California, Santa Barbara.Archived from the original on 23 November 2004. Retrieved17 April 2012.
Michaelsen, Jacob B. (Spring 1997)."Remembering Anne Frank".Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought.46 (2).
Morine, Suzanne (1 December 2007)."People in Anne Frank's Life". Anne Frank Diary Reference.org.Archived from the original on 4 September 2011. Retrieved17 April 2012.
"Nothospital".Gedenkstätten Bergen-Belsen (in German). Stiftung Niedersächsische Gedenkstätten. Archived fromthe original on 27 March 2013. Retrieved23 July 2013.
.jpg)
_-_front_cover%2c_first_edition.jpg)
