Biography of Anne Frank
By Radiyah Shakur
 Annelies
Marie Frank is undoubtedly one of the most well-known
teenagers in modern-day history. Anne, a German-Jew,
kept daily entries in her famous diary of the 25 months
she and seven other Jews spent in hiding in Amsterdam
between June 1942 and August 1944.
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany
on 12 June 1929. In 1933, Hitler and his anti-Jewish
Socialist Party came into power. In response to
Hitler’s anti-Semitic decrees, Anne’s
parents Edith and Otto Frank decided there was
no future in Germany for their two daughters. Shortly
after, Otto Frank relocated his business to Amsterdam,
and then sent for his family a few months later.
The Frank family moved in to a house in southern
Amsterdam in 1933. Anne began attending a Montessori
school nearby, where she excelled and made many friends.
For seven years, Anne grew up with out many cares
in safer Holland.
In 1940, however, the protection that Holland was
able to provide came to an end when the Nazis invaded
the Netherlands. Within five days Holland surrendered
to the invading German forces. During this time it
was essential for Jews to arrange hiding spaces with
non-Jews if they were to escape deportation to concentration
camps. Similarly, finding such hiding spaces was
difficult; consequently Anne’s father decided
to convert the annex of his office building.
On 6 July 1942 the Frank family went into hiding
and moved into the ‘’Secret Annex’’.
For more than two years during World War II, Anne
Frank recorded her daily life in exile.
On 4 August 1944, the Secret Annex was raided after
a Dutchman betrayed their hiding place to the Nazis.
Anne, her family, and the others living with them
in the cramped rooms were arrested and deported to
Auschwitz. One month later, Anne and her sister were
transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
There Anne and her sister both contracted Typhus
and died within a short period of one another in
March 1945, merely a few weeks before liberation.
Anne Frank’s diary was saved during the war
by one of the family’s helpers, Miep Gies,
and was first published in 1947. Since, the diary
has been translated into 67 languages, and remains
one of the most widely read books in the world.
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