Anne Frank - Antoine Fields (classic english novels txt) 📗

Who Was Annie Frank?

Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank (June 12, 1929 to March 1945) was a world-famous German-born diarist and World War II Holocaust victim. Her work, The Diary of Anne Frank, has gone on to be read by millions. Fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews, the family moved to Amsterdam and later went into hiding for two years. During this time, Frank wrote about her experiences and wishes. She was 15 when the family was found and sent to concentration camps, where she died. 

The Diary of Anne Frank

 

The Secret Annex: Diary Letters from June 14, 1942 to August 1, 1944 was a selection of passages from Anne Frank’s diary published on June 25, 1947 by Anne Frank’s father, Otto. "If she had been here, Anne would have been so proud," he said. For all its passages of despair, Frank's diary is essentially a story of faith, hope and love in the face of hate. 

On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank's parents gave her a red checkered diary for her 13th birthday. She wrote her first entry, addressed to an imaginary friend named Kitty, that same day: "I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support."

During the two years Anne Frank spent hiding from the Nazis with her family in the Secret Annex in Amsterdam, she wrote extensive daily entries in her diary to pass the time. Some betrayed the depth of despair into which she occasionally sunk during day after day of confinement. "I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die," she wrote on February 3, 1944. "The world will keep on turning without me, and I can't do anything to change events anyway." However, the act of writing allowed Frank to maintain her sanity and her spirits. "When I write, I can shake off all my cares," she wrote on April 5, 1944.

The Diary of a Young Girl, as it's typically called in English, has since been published in 67 languages. Countless editions, as well as screen and stage adaptations, of the work have been created around the world. The Diary of a Young Girl remains one of the most moving and widely read firsthand accounts of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust.

The Secret Annex

 

On July 5, 1942, Margot received an official summons to report to a Nazi work camp in Germany; the very next day, the Frank family went into hiding in makeshift quarters in an empty space at the back of Otto Frank's company building, which they referred to as the Secret Annex. They were accompanied in hiding by Otto's business partner Hermann van Pels as well as his wife, Auguste, and son, Peter. Otto's employees Kleiman and Kugler, as well as Jan and Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, provided food and information about the outside world.

The families spent two years in hiding, never once stepping outside the dark, damp, sequestered portion of the building. 

Concentration Camp

 

On August 4, 1944, a German secret police officer accompanied by four Dutch Nazis stormed into the Secret Annex, arresting everyone that was hiding there. They had been betrayed by an anonymous tip, and the identity of their betrayer remains unknown to this day. The residents of the Secret Annex were shipped off to Camp Westerbork, a concentration camp in the northeastern Netherlands, and arrived by passenger train on August 8, 1944. They were transferred to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland in the middle of the night on September 3, 1944. Upon arriving at Auschwitz, the men and women were separated. This was the last time that Otto Frank ever saw his wife or daughters.

After several months of hard labor hauling heavy stones and grass mats, Anne and Margot were again transferred during the winter to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where they both died in March 1945. Their mother was not allowed to go with them, and Edith Frank fell ill and died at Auschwitz shortly after arriving at the camp, on January 6, 1945.

Legacy

 

After the end of World War II, the Secret Annex was on a list of buildings to be demolished, but a group of people in Amsterdam campaigned and set up the foundation now known as the Anne Frank House. The house preserved Frank’s hiding spot; today it is one of the three most popular museums in Amsterdam. In June 2013, the Anne Frank House lost a lawsuit to the Anne Frank Fonds, after the Fonds sued the House for the return of documents linked to Anne and Otto Frank. Anne’s physical diary and other writings, however, are property of the Dutch state and have been on permanent loan to the House since 2009. In 2015, the Fonds, the copyright holders of Anne’s diary, lost a lawsuit against the House after the House began new scientific research on the texts in 2011.

In 2009, the Anne Frank Center USA launched a national initiative called the Sapling Project, planting saplings from a 170-year-old chestnut tree that Anne had long loved (as denoted in her diary) at 11 different sites nationwide. 

How Anne Frank Died

 Anne and her sister, Margot, were both given official death dates of March 31, 1945, by Dutch authorities after the end of World War II. The Frank sisters died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but the exact dates of their deaths are unknown.

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Publication Date: 09-17-2017

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