Anne Frank

Annelies Marie Frank (German: [ˈanə(liːs maˈʁiː) ˈfʁaŋk] ⓘ, Dutch: [ˌɑnəˈlis maːˈri ˈfrɑŋk, ˈɑnə ˈfrɑŋk] ⓘ; 12 June 1929 – c. February or March 1945) was a German-born Jewish girl who gained worldwide fame posthumously for keeping a diary documenting her life in hiding during the <a href="/facts/German_occupation_of_the_Netherlands/QshEBnb7">German occupation of the Netherlands</a>. In the diary, she regularly described her family's everyday life in their hiding place in an <a href="/facts/Amsterdam/Xdd393bz">Amsterdam</a> attic from 1942 until their arrest in 1944. 
Frank was born in <a href="/facts/Frankfurt/Pw4Xj9A4">Frankfurt</a>, Germany, in 1929. In 1934, when she was four and a half, Frank and her family moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands after <a href="/facts/Adolf_Hitler/3zyXG1L8">Adolf Hitler</a> and the Nazi Party gained control over <a href="/facts/Nazi_Germany/8kRbqRpo">Germany</a>. By May 1940, the family was trapped in Amsterdam by the <a href="/facts/Reichskommissariat_Niederlande/oLJ6Ww4H">German occupation of the Netherlands</a>. Frank lost her German citizenship in 1941 and became <a href="/facts/Statelessness/2chWIMoh">stateless</a>. Despite spending most of her life in the Netherlands and being a <a href="/facts/De_facto/3Du6WQKh">de facto</a> Dutch national, she never officially became a <a href="/facts/Dutch_nationality_law/R03BlGgC">Dutch citizen</a>. As <a href="/facts/History_of_the_Jews_during_World_War_II/oWVVVRos">persecutions of the Jewish population</a> increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in <a href="/facts/Anne_Frank_House/x9CnVT0B">rooms concealed</a> behind a bookcase in the building where Frank's father, <a href="/facts/Otto_Frank/Xo2lAGFL">Otto Frank</a>, worked. The family was arrested two years later by the <a href="/facts/Gestapo/X0bHmeX1">Gestapo</a> on 4 August 1944.
Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to <a href="/facts/Nazi_concentration_camps/2st2dDQm">concentration camps</a>. On 1 November 1944, Anne Frank and her sister, <a href="/facts/Margot_Frank/LYeQ688h">Margot</a>, were transferred from <a href="/facts/Auschwitz_concentration_camp/6o3xax0D">Auschwitz</a> to <a href="/facts/Bergen-Belsen_concentration_camp/zYywNnpj">Bergen-Belsen concentration camp</a>, where they died (presumably of <a href="/facts/Typhus/tlxCFaHf">typhus</a>) a few months later. They were estimated by the <a href="/facts/International_Red_Cross_and_Red_Crescent_Movement/KcT9EGnA">Red Cross</a> to have died in March, with Dutch authorities setting 31 March as the official date. Later research has alternatively suggested, however, that they may have died in February or early March.
Otto, the only <a href="/facts/The_Holocaust/vGQsAb2y">Holocaust</a> survivor in the Frank family, returned to Amsterdam after <a href="/facts/World_War_II/2efV5L1U">World War II</a> to find that Anne's diary had been saved by his secretaries, <a href="/facts/Miep_Gies/y3IjhTF2">Miep Gies</a> and <a href="/facts/Bep_Voskuijl/66PYg9Ml">Bep Voskuijl</a>. Moved by his daughter's repeated wishes to be an author, Otto Frank published her diary in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl (originally Het Achterhuis in Dutch, lit. 'the back house'; English: The Secret Annex) and has since been translated into over 70 languages. 
With the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne became one of the most-discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. One of the world's best-known books, it has been the basis for several plays and <a href="/facts/List_of_films_about_Anne_Frank/WHIRsIUN">films</a>.

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Anne Frank