ANNE FRANK

This is Anne Frank in May 1942. In a few weeks it would be her thirteenth birthday. She was given a diary as a birthday present. She began to write in it straight away. On the first page she wrote: ‘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.’

Her diary mainly deals with her time in the ‘secret annexe’. That is the name people have given to the place where Anne had to go into hiding. She had to hide there together with her parents, her sister and four other Jewish people. Their lives were in danger. It was wartime, and the Netherlands was occupied by the German army. Jewish people were being arrested and sent to concentration camps.

Only her father...
After two years, the people in hiding in the secret annexe were discovered and arrested. Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. She was fifteen years old. Of the eight people in hiding only Anne’s father survived the Holocaust. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews were killed in the concentration camps and extermination camps.

'The Secret Annexe’
After the war Anne’s father returned to Amsterdam. Anne’s diary had been saved. He thought that he shouldn’t keep it to himself, and had it published as a book called ‘The Secret Annexe’. Millions of people all around the world have read the book. Every year thousands of people come to Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank House. They want to see the place where Anne wrote her diary with their own eyes.