Biography of Anne Frank
Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt (Hesse, Germany) and was the second daughter of Otto Frank (May 12, 1889 - August 19, 1980) and his wife, Edith Hollander (January 16, 1900 - January 6, 1945), a family of German Jews, whose father, Otto, had served as a lieutenant in the German army during World War I. She had an older sister, Margot (February 16, 1926 - March 9, 1945). Along with her family, she had to move to the city of Amsterdam to escape the Nazis. There her parents gave her a diary when she turned thirteen. Shortly after, her family went into hiding in a secret annex, the Achterhuis, as she called it in her diary, located in an old building on Prinsengracht, a canal on the west side of Amsterdam, whose entrance was concealed behind a bookshelf.
They lived there during the German occupation, from July 9, 1942, to August 4, 1944.
There were eight people in hiding: her parents, Otto and Edith Frank; she and her older sister, Margot; Fritz Pfeffer, a Jewish dentist (whom Anne dubbed Albert Dussel in her diary), and the van Pels family (identified as van Daan in the diary), consisting of Hermann and Auguste van Pels and their son, Peter. During those years, Anne wrote in her diary, in which she described her fear of living hidden for years, her growing feelings for Peter, her conflicts with her parents, and her aspiration to be a writer. A few months before being discovered, she began rewriting her diary with the idea of publishing it after the war.
Anne, her family, and companions were arrested by the Grüne Polizei on August 4, 1944, and a month later, on September 2, the entire family was transported by train from Westerbork (a camp in the northeast of the Netherlands) to the Auschwitz concentration camp, a journey that took three days. Meanwhile, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, two of the people who protected them while they were in hiding, found and kept Anne's diary and other papers.
Since their capture, it was believed that the family was betrayed by a collaborator with the Gestapo; however, investigations suggest that the discovery of the occupants was accidental since SS agents were investigating illegal employment crimes in the building, and that the persecution of Jews was not their objective.
Anne, Margot, and Edith Frank, along with the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer, did not survive the Nazi concentration camps (although Peter van Pels died during the marches between the camps). Margot and Anne spent a month in Auschwitz II-Birkenau before being sent to Bergen-Belsen, where they died of typhus in March 1945, shortly before liberation. Only Otto managed to survive the Holocaust. Miep gave him the diary, which he would publish under the title "The Diary of Anne Frank," which has since been printed in 70 languages.
The memorial honoring Anne and Margot Frank is located at the site of the mass grave corresponding to the barracks where they died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
When she turned thirteen, on June 12, 1942, Anne received a small notebook that she had shown her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an autograph book, bound in red and black checkered cloth, with a small lock on the front, Anne had already decided to use it as a diary. She began writing in it almost immediately, describing herself and her family, as well as her daily life at home and at school.
Lacking a "soul friend," as Anne put it, she wrote to the diary as if addressing a friend. She named her diary Kitty and used "Dear Kitty" as a form of introduction, a direct reference to Kathe Zgyedie, a classmate whom she referred to affectionately. She wrote in the form of letters about her performance in class, her friends, boys she liked, and the places she preferred to visit in her neighborhood. While these early writings in her diary show that her life was, in many ways, the typical life of a schoolgirl, she also analyzes the changes that were occurring due to the German occupation. Some references seem casual and without great emphasis; however, in some parts, she describes in greater detail the oppression that was increasing every day. She wrote about the stars that all Jews were required to wear in public and also listed some of the restrictions and persecutions imposed upon the daily lives of the Jewish population in Amsterdam.
On July 5, 1942, Margot Frank received a notice ordering her to report for deportation to a labor camp. Anne was then informed of a plan that Otto had prepared with his most trusted employees, and that Edith and Margot had known for a few days. The family would hide in concealed rooms at the company's premises on Prinsengracht, a street along one of the canals in Amsterdam.
Life in the Annex
On July 9, 1942, the family moved to the prepared hiding place, and their old apartment was left in disarray, thinking that it had been suddenly abandoned. Otto Frank left a note from which it could be inferred that they had managed to escape to Switzerland. Since Jews were not allowed to use public transportation, they had to walk several kilometers from their home to the hiding place, each carrying all the clothes they could, as they could not risk being seen with luggage. The Achterhuis (Dutch for 'house' and 'back') was a three-story space at the back of the building, with access to a courtyard behind Opekta's offices. On the first level, there were two small rooms, with an adjoining bathroom, which contained a large room, with another smaller house. From that smaller room, they went up to the attic. The door to the Achterhuis was concealed behind a bookshelf so that it could not be seen. Anne would later refer to this space as the Secret Annex. The main building, located a block from Westerkerk, was an ordinary, nondescript building typical of the western neighborhoods of Amsterdam.
Victor Kugler (in earlier editions named as Kraler), Johannes Kleiman (Koophuis), Miep Gies, and Elisabeth 'Bep' Voskuijl were the only staff members who knew about the hiding place and, along with Jan Gies' husband, Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, Bep Voskuijl's father helped Frank survive during his confinement. They were the only contact between the outside world and the occupants of the house, and they kept them informed of war news and political events. They were also responsible for providing everything necessary for the family's safety and survival; the food supply became increasingly difficult over time. Anne wrote about their dedication and efforts to lift their spirits during the most dangerous moments. Everyone knew that harboring Jews was punishable by death at that time.
By the end of July, the van Pels family (van Daan) joined them: Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter, and later, in November, Fritz Pfeffer (Albert Dussel), a dentist and family friend arrived. Anne wrote about how nice it was to have other people to talk to, but tensions quickly arose in this group of people who had to live confined in that hiding place. After sharing a room with Pfeffer, Anne finally found it unbearable, and fought with Auguste van Pels, whom she considered to be out of her mind. Her relationship with her mother became very difficult, and Anne wrote that she felt she had little in common with her mother for being too distracted. Sometimes she argued with Margot and wrote about an unexpected bond that had developed between them, although she felt closer to her father. Some time later, she also began to appreciate Peter van Pels's kindness, and even developed romantic feelings for him.
Anne spent most of her time reading and studying while continuing to write in her diary. Besides narrating past events, Anne wrote about her feelings, beliefs, and ambitions, topics she did not discuss with others. Feeling more confident about her writing, as she grew and matured, she wrote on more abstract themes, such as her belief in God, or how she defines human nature. She wrote regularly until her final entry on August 1, 1944.
**Arrest and Death**
On the morning of August 4, 1944, the Grüne Polizei (or Gestapo) raided the Achterhuis. It was originally believed that a Gestapo informant had reported the hiding place, but recent research suggests that the discovery was possibly accidental. Led by Sergeant Karl Silberbauer of the Security Police, the group consisted of at least three members of the Security Police. The occupants were placed in trucks and taken for interrogation. Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were arrested, but Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were allowed to leave. They later returned to the Achterhuis, where they found Anne's notes scattered across the floor. They took them, along with several family photo albums, and Gies pledged to return them to Anne when the war was over.
They took the members of the house to a camp in Westerbork. It was ostensibly a transit camp through which more than 100,000 Jews had been transported; on September 2, the group was deported, which would be their last move, from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp. After three days of travel, they arrived at their destination, where the men and women were separated by sex, never to see each other again. Of the 1,019 newcomers, 549—including children under 15—were selected and sent directly to the gas chambers, where they were killed. Anne had turned 15 just three months earlier, and although all from the Achterhuis survived the selection, Anne believed that her father had been killed.
Along with the other women not selected for immediate death, Anne was forced to remain naked for disinfection; her head was shaved, and an identification number was tattooed on her arm. During the day, they were made to perform forced labor, and at night, they were crammed into refrigerated barracks. Diseases spread rapidly, and soon Anne ended up with scaly skin.
On October 28, selection began to relocate the women in Bergen-Belsen. More than 8,000 women, including Anne Frank, Margot Frank, and Auguste van Pels, were moved, but Edith Frank was left behind. Tents were erected to accommodate the influx of prisoners, including Anne and Margot. With the increase in population, the mortality rate from disease rose rapidly. Anne was able to briefly meet with two friends, Hanneli Goslar (called "Lies" in the diary) and Nanette Blitz, who survived the war. They reported that Anne, naked except for a blanket, explained to them that, infested with lice, she had removed her clothes. They described her as bald, emaciated, and trembling, but despite her illness, she said she was more concerned about Margot, whose condition seemed more serious. Goslar and Blitz did not see Margot, who remained on her bunk, very weak. Furthermore, Anne told them they were alone and that their parents had died.
In March 1945, an outbreak of typhus spread through the camp; it is estimated that it claimed the lives of 17,000 prisoners. Witnesses later reported that Margot, weakened as she was, fell from her bunk and died as a result of the fall, and that a few days later, Anne also died. A few weeks later, the camp would be liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945.
After the war, of the approximately 110,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation, only 5,000 survived. Of the eight occupants of the Achterhuis, only Anne's father survived. Hermann van Pels was gassed upon the group's arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau on September 6, 1944. His wife, Auguste, died between April 9 and May 8, 1945, in Germany or Czechoslovakia. Their son, Peter, died on May 5, 1945, in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, after being transferred from Auschwitz.
Dr. Friedrich Pfeffer (or Mr. Dussel) died on December 20, 1944, in the Neuengamme concentration camp. Anne's mother, Edith Hollander, died on January 6, 1945, in Birkenau. Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler, business partners of Otto Frank who helped the family when they were in hiding, were arrested for assisting the Frank family. Both were sentenced to perform Arbeitseinsatz (labor service) in Germany and survived the war.
The Diary of Anne Frank
Otto Frank survived and returned to Amsterdam. He was informed of the deaths of his wife and daughters upon their transfer to Bergen-Belsen, leaving with the hope that he had managed to survive. In July 1945, the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of Anne and Margot, and it was only then that Miep Gies handed over the diary. After reading it, Otto said he had not realized how Anne had maintained such an accurate and well-written account of their time together. Trying to fulfill Anne's expressed desire in the diary to become a writer, he decided to try to publish it. When asked years later about his first reaction, he simply said: "I never knew my little Anne was so deep."
The Diary of Anne Frank began as a particular expression of her innermost thoughts, expressing the intention never to allow others to read it. It candidly describes her life, her family and friends, and her situation while beginning to recognize her ambition to write and publish novels. In the summer of 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by Gerrit Bolkestein—a member of the Dutch government in exile—saying that after the war, a public record of the oppression suffered by the people of her country under German occupation would be created. He mentioned the publication of letters and diaries, so Anne decided to contribute her diary. She began editing her writing, removing sections, and rewriting others, with an eye toward possible publication. In her original notebook, she attached several additional notebooks and loose sheets. She created pseudonyms for the members of her family and her benefactors. The van Pels family became Hermann, Petronella, and Peter van Daan; Fritz Pfeffer was renamed Albert Dussel. Otto Frank used the original version of the diary, known as "version A," and the corrected version, referred to as "version B," to produce the first published version. He removed some passages, especially those in which his wife was concerned in unflattering terms, and sections that spoke about intimate details of her blossoming sexuality. He restored the true identity of his family but kept the pseudonyms of others.
Frank took the diary to historian Anne Romein, who attempted to publish it unsuccessfully. He then handed it to her husband, Jan Romein, who wrote an article about the book titled "Kinderstem" ("The Voice of a Girl") in the newspaper Het Parool on April 3, 1946. He wrote that the diary "deliberately expresses in the voice of a girl, showing all the hatred of fascism, better than all the evidence from the Nuremberg trials combined." His article attracted the attention of publishers, and the diary was published in the Netherlands in 1947 by Contact Publishers, Amsterdam, under the title Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex). It was reprinted in 1950. In April 1955, the first Spanish translation of the diary appeared, titled "Los cuartos de atrás" (translated by Maria Isabel Iglesias, published by Garbo, Barcelona).
Albert Hackett wrote a play based on the diary, which premiered in New York in 1955, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play was filmed in 1959 under the title "The Diary of Anne Frank." It starred actress Millie Perkins, Shelley Winters—who played Mrs. van Pels, winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress—and brought attention to the Anne Frank House. The film was well-received and won two more Oscars. Although it did not become a blockbuster, it sparked increasing global interest in the book. The diary has grown in popularity over the years and is now required reading in schools in various countries and several states in the United States. In February 2008, the musical "The Diary of Anne Frank - A Song to Life" premiered in Madrid. This was the first time the Anne Frank Foundation granted rights to a company to produce a musical about Anne Frank and her work worldwide.
In 1986, a critical edition of the diary was published. This edition compared original sections with sections modified by Otto Frank and included a discussion of its authenticity and historical data about her family.
In 1988, director Cornelis Suijk, an old member of the Anne Frank Foundation and president of the Foundation for Holocaust Education in the United States, announced that he had obtained five pages that had been removed from the diary by Otto Frank before publication. Suijk claims that Otto Frank gave him these pages shortly before his death in 1980. The deleted pages contain Anne Frank's very critical comments regarding her parents' marriage and her mother. Suijk's decision to claim copyright on the five pages to fund his foundation in the United States caused controversy. The Dutch Institute for War Documentation, the current owner of the manuscript, requested that the missing pages be returned to it. In 2000, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science agreed to donate $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.
In 2004, a new book published in the Netherlands, titled "Mooie zinnen-Boek" (Book of Beautiful Sentences), contained excerpts from books and short poems compiled by Anne, at her father's suggestion, during her stay in the Achterhuis.
Praise for Anne Frank and Her Diary
In her introduction to the first edition of the diary in the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt described it as "one of the wisest and most moving commentaries I have read about the war and its impact on human beings." Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg later said, "A voice speaks for six million—they do not speak from a sage or a poet but from an ordinary girl." As Anne Frank's legacy as a writer and humanitarian grew, she became a symbol of the Holocaust and a broader representative of persecution. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her welcoming speech for an Elie Wiesel Humanitarian Prize in 1994, quoted the Diary of Anne Frank and stated that "it wakes us up against the madness of indifference and the terrible toll it takes on our youth," linking it to recent events in Sarajevo, Somalia, and Rwanda. After receiving the Anne Frank Humanitarian Prize in 1994, Nelson Mandela addressed a crowd in Johannesburg, saying he had read Anne Frank's diary while in prison and that "it had a profound impact on him." He compared Anne's struggle against Nazism to his own fight against apartheid, drawing a parallel between the two philosophies, commenting, "because these beliefs are patently false, and because they have been and always will be challenged by the likes of Anne Frank, they are destined to fail.”
In the final message of Melissa Müller's biography of Anne Frank, Miep Gies attempted to dispel what she believed to be a misunderstanding by saying that "Anne symbolizes six million victims of the Holocaust," writing: "Anne's life and death was her own destiny, an individual fate that was repeated six million times. Anne cannot, and must not, represent the many individuals whose lives were stolen from them by the Nazis … But her destiny helps us to accept the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust.
The diary has also been praised for its literary merit. Commenting on Anne's writing style, American Jew Meyer Levin, who worked with Otto Frank on dramatizing the diary shortly after its publication, praised it for "maintaining the tension of a well-constructed novel," while poet John Berryman wrote that it was a unique representation, not only of adolescence but also of "the mysterious and fundamental process of a child becoming an adult, as it truly is." Her biographer Melissa Müller remarked that she wrote "in a precise, confident, and economical style, astonishing in its frankness." Her writing is largely a character study, examining each person in her circle with an astute and unwavering eye. She is occasionally cruel and often biased, especially in her portrayals of Fritz Pfeffer and her own mother, with Müller explaining that she channeled “normal adolescent humor” through her work. Her consideration of herself and her surroundings is maintained over a long period, introspective, analytical, and highly self-critical, and at moments of frustration, she records the battle being waged within her between the “good Anne” she wants to be and the “bad” she thinks she is. Otto Frank recalled how he had explained to his editor why he thought the Diary would be read so extensively, commenting, "he said that the diary covers so many stages of life that every reader can find something that moves him."
Challenges and Denialist Legal Actions
Since its publication, there have been efforts to discredit the diary, and since the mid-1970s, David Irving (a Holocaust denier) has consistently claimed that the diary is not authentic. According to Robert Faurisson, another denier, the diary was not actually written by Anne Frank because it contains pages written with a ballpoint pen, invented in 1938 and patented in Argentina on June 10, 1943, but which supposedly was not introduced in Germany until a year after the date when Anne had already been transferred to a concentration camp (September 2, 1944) and completed her Diary. Nonetheless, various studies conducted on the diary have shown that the pages containing ballpoint pen notes were two pages added in 1960 by a graphologist studying the text. In 2006, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which had certified the existence of these two pages written in pen in 1980, issued a statement explaining that the study of the four pages in no way could be used to question the authenticity of the diary.
Ongoing public statements made by Holocaust deniers led Teresien da Silva to comment in 1999, on behalf of Anne Frank, that "for many right-wing extremists, [Anne] proves to be an obstacle. Her testimony of the persecution of Jews and her death in a concentration camp block the way for the rehabilitation of National Socialism."
Since the 1950s, Holocaust denial has been a criminal offense in some European countries, and laws have been used to curb the rise of neo-Nazi activity. In 1959, Otto Frank took legal action in Lübeck against Lothar Stielau, a teacher and former member of the Hitler Youth who published a student paper describing the diary as a forgery. The court examined the diary and concluded in 1960 that it was authentic. Stielau recanted his previous statement, and Otto Frank accepted no further statements from him.
In 1958, a group of protesters challenged Simon Wiesenthal during a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank in Vienna, insisting that Anne Frank never existed and asked him to prove her existence by finding the man who had arrested her. He began searching for Karl Silberbauer and found him in 1963. When interviewed, Silberbauer quickly admitted his role and identified Anne Frank in a photograph as one of those who had been arrested. He provided a complete account of events, recalling emptying a suitcase full of papers onto the floor. His statement corroborated the version of events that had been presented earlier by witnesses, including Otto Frank.
In 1976, Otto Frank took action against Heinz Roth from Frankfurt, who published pamphlets claiming the Diary was a forgery. The judge ruled that should he publish any new claims along those lines, he would be fined 500,000 DM and face six months in prison. Two cases were dismissed by German courts in 1978 and 1979, citing rights to freedom of speech, since the complaint had not been made by any "injured party." The court stated in each case that if a new complaint were made by an injured party, such as Otto Frank, the defamation case could be opened.
The controversy reached its peak in 1980 with the arrest and trial of two neo-Nazis, Ernst Römer and Edgar Geiss, who were judged guilty of creating and distributing pamphlets denouncing the authenticity of the Diary, which was followed by a complaint from Otto Frank. During the appeal, a team of historians examined the documents for Otto Frank and determined their authenticity.
With the death of Otto Frank in 1980, the original diary, including letters and loose sheets, was bequeathed to the Dutch War Documentation Institute, which conducted a forensic study of the diary through the Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands in 1986. They grouped the handwriting samples and determined they matched confirmed authorship, and that the paper, glue, and ink were easily obtainable during the time it was alleged the diary had been written. Their final determination was that the diary was authentic. On March 23, 1990, the Hamburg District Court confirmed its authenticity.
Legacy of Anne Frank
On May 3, 1957, a group of citizens, including Otto Frank, established the Anne Frank Foundation in an effort to save the Achterhuis building on Prinsengracht from demolition and make it accessible to the public. Otto Frank insisted that the foundation's goal would be to promote contact and communication between young people from different cultures, religions, and races and to oppose intolerance and racial discrimination.
The Anne Frank House opened on May 3, 1960. It consists of the Opekta warehouse, offices, and the Achterhuis, all unfurnished so that visitors can freely walk through all the rooms. Some personal relics of its former inhabitants are preserved, such as photographs of movie stars glued on the wall by Anne, a section of the wall on which Otto Frank marked his daughters' growth, and a map on the wall where he recorded the advance of Allied forces, all now protected by Plexiglas sheets. From the small room that was home to Peter van Pels, a walkway connects the building with its neighboring buildings, which were also acquired by the Foundation. These additional buildings preserve the diary, as well as permanent exhibitions describing various aspects of the Holocaust and more contemporary signs of racial intolerance around the world. It has become one of the major tourist attractions in the Netherlands, visited annually by over half a million people.
In 1963, Otto Frank and his second wife, Fritzi (Elfriede Markowitz-Geiringer), established the Anne Frank Fonds as a charitable organization based in Basel, Switzerland. The Fonds raises money to donate to causes in need. After his death, Otto wanted the rights to the Diary to belong to this institution, on the condition that the first 80,000 Swiss francs produced as profit each year would be distributed among his heirs, and that all income exceeding that amount would be used by the Fonds for projects deemed worthy by its administrators. It provides an annual basis for funding for the medical treatment of the Righteous Among the Nations. It has worked to educate youth against racism and has provided some of Anne Frank's manuscripts to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., for an exhibition in 2003. The annual report for that year accounted for some of its effort to make contributions on a global scale, supporting projects in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Today, the Anne Frank Foundation has five partner organizations: in the UK, Germany, the USA, Austria, and Argentina, which also serve as facilitators of educational activities about Anne Frank (such as the traveling exhibition "Anne Frank: A Current Story") and conduct their own educational activities.
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