Anne Frank

Annelies Marie Frank, known as Anne Frank (12 June 1929 – around February or March 1945), was a Jewish girl born in Germany who kept a diary during her time in hiding under Nazi persecution. Her writings vividly depict the daily life of her family in concealment within an attic in Amsterdam. Anne Frank became one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. After her death, her fame soared with the 1947 publication of “The Diary of a Young Girl,” chronicling her life from 1942 to 1944 during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. The diary has become one of the world's most well-known books and become the basis for numerous plays and films.

Anne was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and her family relocated to Amsterdam in 1934 due to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany. The Franks found themselves trapped in Amsterdam after the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940. Anne, along with her family, went into hiding in concealed rooms behind a bookcase in her father Otto Frank's workplace when persecution against the Jewish population intensified in July 1942. Throughout their period in hiding until their arrest by the Gestapo on 4 August 1944, Anne diligently wrote in her diary, which she had received as a birthday gift.

Following their arrest, the Franks were sent to concentration camps. In November 1944, Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they likely succumbed to typhus a few months later. Initially believed to have died in March, later research suggests their deaths occurred in February or early March.

Otto Frank, Anne's father and the sole survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that Anne's diary had been preserved by his female secretaries, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl. In fulfillment of Anne's dream to become a writer, Otto decided to publish her diary in 1947. Originally written in Dutch, it was translated into English in 1952 as "The Diary of a Young Girl" has been translated into more than 70 languages.