Annelies "Anne" Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt on 12 June 1929. She was the second daughter of the businessman Otto Frank (1889-1980) and Edith Holender (1900-1945). The eldest daughter of the family was called Margot (1926-1945) and was three years older than Anna. The Franks were not fanatically attached to Judaism and lived in a non-Jewish neighborhood in Frankfurt.
After Hitler came to power in 1933, the Frank family moved to Amsterdam. Initially, Otto Frank worked in a pectin production company and in 1938 started his own business, dealing in fruit wholesaling. When the Germans occupied the Netherlands in 1941, Anna was forced to transfer from the Montessori school she was attending to a special school for Jews.
Facing the threat of deportation to a forced labour camp, Otto Frank and his family decided to hide in the warehouse of their business[/B] in Amsterdam (9 July 1942). Having secured food and the help of some of their non-Jewish friends, they remained in their hiding place until 4 August 1944, when they were discovered by the Gestapo and arrested.
The Frank family was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where Anna's mother, Edith, died from hardship on 6 January 1945. Anna and her sister were transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and died there of typhus, Margot on 9 March 1945 and Anna three days later. Otto Frank was the only member of the family to survive. He was found alive in Auschwitz and was liberated by the Red Army.
After the Franks were arrested in Amsterdam, friends of the family searched the hideout and handed Otto Frank various documents, including Anna's diary, which was written in Dutch. Her father published it in 1947 under the title Het Achterhuis (The Back House) or as it is known in our country The Diary of Anne Frank.
The book is notable for its mature style and insightful observations and reveals the young author's emotional maturation through adversity, which did not prevent her from writing:"Nevertheless, I still believe that all people are fundamentally good." In recent years the authenticity of the diary has been questioned by Holocaust revisionist historians such as Robert Faurisson, Roger Garodie and David Irving.
Source: sansimera
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