Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929.
Following the Nazi rose to power, and fearing their antisemitic policy,
the Frank family emigrated to Amsterdam -
the parents Otto and Edith, and daughters Margot, the eldest, and Anne.
In May 1940, following the conquest of the Netherlands by Germany,
the family again found itself under threat of Nazi persecution.
The daughters were expelled from school and forced to attend a Jewish school
and Otto Frank was forced to resign from the business he owned.
Two years passed before the family went into hiding.
With the aid of Otto's employees a secret apartment had been prepared
in a hidden annex in the office building that had been sold to Jan Gies,
on Prinsengracht Street in Amsterdam.
In July 1942, after Margot was ordered to report at a work camp,
the family hurriedly left their home and vanished into their hiding-place
behind a revolving bookcase.
They weren't alone,
they were joined by the van Pels family,
Hermann, Auguste, 16-year-old Peter, and later, Fritz Pfeffer.
From then on, their communication with the outside world was solely through Otto's five employees
who risked their lives, while providing the families food and their other needs.
A month earlier Anne received a present for her 13th birthday,
a blank notebook
with a red checked cloth cover and a small lock.
On June 12, 1942 she began to write in it.
Less than a month later, on July 8,
two days before she went into hiding, she wrote to Kitty, as she called her diary:
"Dearest Kitty, It seems like years since Sunday morning.
"So much has happened it's as if the whole world had suddenly turned upside down.
"But as you can see, Kitty, I'm still alive, and that's the main thing, Father says."
Anne made sure no one saw her writings
except for some stories she wrote and read to her eight partners in hiding
who shared their lives in the four hidden rooms.
She had to share her room with Fritz Pfeffer, a middle-aged dentist,
and she often felt that, despite being lucky, the walls were closing in on her.
As time passed, tensions mounted between the tenants.
In her diary Anne speaks of life in hiding,
describing those around her candidly, for good and for ill,
as well as her relationship with Peter, to whom she grew closer,
and Bep, the youngest of the liaisons.
Faced with the restrictions of life in hiding, Anne described a turbulent inner world.
Friday December 24, 1943:
"Dear Kitty:
[...] Believe me, if you've been shut up for a year and a half
"it can get to be too much for you sometimes.
"But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust
"or ungrateful they seem.
"I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world,
"feel young and know that I'm free,
"and yet I can't let it show.
"Just imagine what would happen if all eight of us were to feel sorry for ourselves
"or walk around with the discontent clearly visible on our faces.
"Where would that get us? I sometimes wonder
"if anyone will ever understand what I mean,
"[..] not worry about whether or not I'm Jewish
"and merely see me as a teenager badly in need of some good plain fun.
"I don't know, and I wouldn't be able to talk about it with anyone
"since I'm sure I'd start to cry."
In March 1944 Anne wrote Kitty that she had heard on the news
that "after the war a collection would be made of diaries and letters
"dealing with the war,"
adding:
"Of course, everyone pounced on my diary. [..]
"Seriously, though, ten years after the war
"people would find it very [strange] to read how we lived,
"what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding. [..]
"It would take me all day to describe everything
"down to the last detail."
Apparently as a result of the announcement, Anne reread her diary
making corrections in the hope that one day it would be published.
After over two years, due to an anonymous informer,
SS officers, with Dutch aid, broke down
the secret door behind the bookcase.
The eight people in hiding and two of the liaisons were arrested.
In August 1944, six months before the end of the war,
they were taken to the Westerbork transit camp
and from there sent on the last train to Auschwitz.
Margot and Anne were sent to Bergen-Belsen
where they died of typhus just before the liberation.
Otto Frank was the only one to survive.
Tuesday August 1, 1944:
"Dearest Kitty,
"when everybody starts hovering over me I get cross,
"then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out,
"the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside,
"and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be
"and what I could be if... if only there were no other people in the world.
"Yours, Anne M. Frank."