Who was Anne Frank?
Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II. Her diary, written while in hiding, became one of the most widely read books in the world.
Anne was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929. Her family moved to Amsterdam in 1934 to escape Nazi persecution. After Germany occupied the Netherlands and began deporting Jews, the Franks went into hiding in July 1942 in a secret annex behind her father's business, along with four other people. Helpers brought them food and news.
Anne wrote in a diary she received for her 13th birthday, describing life in hiding, her hopes and her thoughts about growing up. In August 1944, the group was discovered and arrested. Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early 1945, at age 15.
The diary
Her father, Otto Frank, the only member of the group to survive, published her diary in 1947. It has been translated into more than 70 languages. The hiding place, now the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam, is visited by more than a million people each year.
Did You Know?
Anne hoped to become a writer and rewrote parts of her diary in 1944 after hearing a radio appeal to keep wartime diaries for publication.