Anne Frank

Of the millions of personal accounts lost to the Holocaust, one survived almost by accident — left behind in an attic, rescued by a family friend, and later published by the only member of its household to come home.

Fleeing Persecution

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929, Anne's family fled to the Netherlands in 1933 as the Nazi Party rose to power and antisemitic persecution intensified. The family settled in Amsterdam, where Anne's father, Otto Frank, ran a business, and the family lived a relatively ordinary life until Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands in 1940.

Life in the Secret Annex

As deportations of Jews accelerated in 1942, the Frank family went into hiding in a concealed set of rooms above Otto Frank's business premises, an area later known as the Secret Annex. They were joined by another family and a dentist, living in cramped silence for over two years, dependent on a small group of Otto's employees who risked their lives to supply them with food and news.

The Diary

For her thirteenth birthday, shortly before going into hiding, Anne received a diary, in which she recorded her daily life, fears, and reflections with striking maturity and self-awareness. She wrote of her hopes to become a writer or journalist, revising many entries herself with an eye toward future publication — a decision that gives the diary an unusually polished, deliberate literary voice for a teenager's private journal.

Discovery and Legacy

In August 1944, the annex was discovered, likely following a betrayal that remains unconfirmed to this day, and its occupants were deported to concentration camps. Anne died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in early 1945, just weeks before the camp's liberation. Her father, Otto, the only member of the annex's occupants to survive the war, published her diary in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl. It has since sold over 30 million copies and been translated into more than 70 languages, standing as one of the defining personal testimonies of the Holocaust.