ANNE FRANK LA PRESENTS: ANNE FRANK DAY

Anne Frank (Annelies Marie Frank) was a Jewish girl born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 12, 1929. When the Nazis came to power in 1934, her parents, Otto and Edith Frank, took refuge with Anne and her older sister Margot in Amsterdam. Anne led a normal family life in Amsterdam until the German Occupation of the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. Heavy restrictions were put in place for Jews. On February 22, 1941, the German arrest and deportation of Jews to concentration camps began. In 1942, when Margot received a call-up notice for a work camp, the family went into hiding in a “Secret Annex” above Otto Frank’s office, located in the historic canal called the Prinsengracht in central Amsterdam. 

• They lived in hiding with four other people, the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer, for over two years (761 days). While in hiding, Anne kept several diaries in which she chronicled life in the annex, her fears, and her dreams of someday being a famous author. 
• In 1944, their hiding place was betrayed. They were arrested by German soldiers, and transported to Westerbork, a Nazi transit camp in the Dutch countryside.
• On September 3, 1944, the Frank family took the last train out of Westerbork to the most infamous death camp of WWII, Auschwitz. Anne and Margot were later sent to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, where they both died, just weeks before the camp’s liberation in 1945. 
• By the end of the war, approximately 6 million Jews had been killed by the Nazis, including nearly 1.5 million children.
•  In 1947, Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the inhabitants of the Secret Annex, published Anne’s diary, as The Diary of a Young Girl. 

The Diary of a Young Girl has been translated into more than 70 languages and is one of the most widely read works of nonfiction in the world.  Anne’s words continue to inspire readers of all ages with its timeless and timely message of resilience, youthful optimism, and the need to stand together against hatred in all its forms.

Anne’s diary is a testament to why young people's voices matter.