Anne Frank writes her diary

1942 Amsterdam, Netherlands

In short

For her thirteenth birthday, on 12 June 1942, Anne Frank was given a diary. A few days later her Jewish family had to go into hiding in Amsterdam, in a secret annexe behind the offices of her father's company, to escape Nazi persecution. For more than two years Anne wrote down her thoughts, fears and hopes. In 1944 the hiding place was discovered; Anne died in a concentration camp in 1945, and her father Otto, the only member of the family to survive, had the diary published.

Why it matters The Diary of Anne Frank, read all over the world, gives a voice and a face to the millions of victims of the Shoah.

Source: Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

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Illustration: Anne Frank writes her diary (Amsterdam, Netherlands) — Illustration created with AI for Storiascopio

Where: Amsterdam, Netherlands

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The story

A girl from Frankfurt

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on 12 June 1929, into a well-off Jewish family: her father Otto, her mother Edith, and her older sister Margot. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 and the persecution of Jews began, the family realised there was no future for them there and moved to the Netherlands, to Amsterdam, where Otto opened a company selling ingredients for making jam. Anne, lively, curious and chatty, settled in quickly: she spoke Dutch, had lots of friends, went to school, played ping-pong and loved the cinema.

But in May 1940 Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands, and there too rules against Jews began: they could no longer go to cinemas, parks or swimming pools, ride on trams, or do their shopping except at certain hours, and they had to wear a yellow star sewn onto their clothes. Jewish children were sent to separate schools.

A red checked diary

On 12 June 1942 Anne turned thirteen. Among her presents was a notebook with a red-and-white checked cover, fastened with a little lock, which she had chosen in a shop a few days earlier. She decided to use it as a diary and to write as if she were talking to a friend, and she gave it a name, Kitty. “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to do with anyone,” she wrote. She described school, her classmates, the boys she liked, the little arguments with her parents.

In hiding

A few weeks later, in July 1942, Margot received a summons: Jews were being ordered to report to be deported to a labour camp. Otto had already prepared a hiding place: a secret apartment at the back of his office, on the upper floors of a house on the Prinsengracht canal, with the entrance disguised by a revolving bookcase. On 6 July the family vanished, wearing as many clothes as they could. They were soon joined by another family, the van Pelses, with their son Peter, and then by a dentist, Fritz Pfeffer: eight people in just a few rooms.

Living in hiding was hard. They could not speak loudly, flush the toilet or walk in shoes during the day, so as not to be heard by the workers in the warehouse below. The windows stayed blacked out. Helping them were some of Otto's employees, Miep Gies, Bep Voskuijl, Johannes Kleiman and Victor Kugler, who brought food, books and news, risking their lives. Anne wrote a great deal, filling notebooks, and studied, read, and dreamed of becoming a journalist and a writer. She longed to go out and breathe the open air, and the end of the war seemed close, but it never came.

4 August 1944

After two years and a month in hiding, on 4 August 1944 the secret police and some Dutch policemen arrived, tipped off by someone who still has not been identified with certainty. The eight people in hiding were arrested and taken away. After a period in the Westerbork camp, they were deported by train to Auschwitz. Anne and Margot were then moved to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany, where typhus spread in the winter of 1944–45. Margot and Anne died a few days apart, in February or March 1945, a few weeks before the camp was liberated. Anne was fifteen. Of everyone in the hiding place, only Otto survived.

The diary comes home

After the arrest, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl went into the hiding place and found Anne's diary and papers scattered on the floor. Miep picked them up and kept them in her desk drawer, without reading them, hoping to give them back to Anne one day. When, in the summer of 1945, it became certain that Anne would not return, she gave them to Otto. Otto read the diary with great emotion, discovering a daughter he had not known: he realised how mature she was and how well she wrote.

At the urging of friends, Otto decided to publish it. The book came out in the Netherlands in 1947, with the title “Het Achterhuis”, “The House Behind”. It was a huge success and has now been translated into more than seventy languages, and sold tens of millions of copies.

Why it happened

Anne Frank's story comes from the Nazi persecution of the Jews. After the occupation of the Netherlands, the Nazis organised the deportation of almost all Dutch Jews: about a hundred thousand people, 75% of them, were killed. Those who managed to hide depended on the courage of those who helped them.

But there is also a simpler reason for the diary's success: Anne's talent. She was not a professional writer, and yet with clear and frank words she managed to describe the fears, hopes and everyday little things of a girl who is growing up.

What changed

Anne Frank's diary has become one of the most widely read books in the world: it gave a face to millions of victims of the Holocaust and made many young people understand that behind the numbers there are people. A line in the diary has become famous: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

The house in Amsterdam is now a museum, the Anne Frank House, open since 1960 and visited every year by more than a million people. You can still see the hiding place. The diary has been included by UNESCO among the documents to be preserved for humanity.

Her message is as relevant as ever: it reminds us of the dangers of racism, the courage of those who help, and the importance of freedom of thought and expression. Many schools, in Italy and around the world, bear her name.

Key people and places

People

Anne Frank: German Jewish girl (1929–1945): author of the diary written in hiding in Amsterdam.
Otto Frank: Anne's father (1889–1980): the only survivor of the hiding place, he published the diary.
Margot Frank: Anne's older sister (1926–1945): she died at Bergen-Belsen a few days before her.
Miep Gies: Otto Frank's Dutch employee (1909–2010): she helped the family and kept the diary.
Peter van Pels: Jewish boy (1926–1945): he lived with the Franks in the hiding place.

Places

Prinsengracht 263, Amsterdam: The address of the house where the Frank family stayed hidden for two years.
Bergen-Belsen, Germany: The camp where Anne and Margot died in 1945.

Good to know

Anne's diary had a red-and-white checked cover and a little lock.
Anne gave her diary a name, Kitty, and wrote as if she were talking to a friend.
The Frank family stayed hidden for two years and a month, eight people in a few rooms.
The diary has been translated into more than seventy languages.
The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam has been a museum since 1960.