Anne Frank (Annelies Marie Frank – 12 June 1929 – c. February 1945) became a German girl of Jewish heritage who became a victim in the Nazi Holocaust.
She gained posthumous fame together with the 1947 publication of The Diary of any Young Girl (Dutch: Het Achterhuis – English: The Secret Annex), where she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, over the German occupation with the Netherlands in World War II.
The Diary of any Young Girl is one in the world’s best-known books and possesses been translated into 70 different languages and also being delivered to life through movies and plays.
Born a German national, in Frankfurt, Germany, Anne lost her citizenship in 1941.
She and her family were expected to move to Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1934 on the age of four due to Hitler along with the Nazi Party’s persecution on the Jews in Europe.
From 1933 to 1942, Anne and her family lived a cheerful life at Merwedeplein square in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Her father, Otto, was obviously a Jewish businessman while her mother, Edith, stayed you will find take care of Anne and Margot.
The girls traveled to school in Amsterdam, along to learn Dutch.
Anne had many friends and enjoyed playing table tennis and dancing using them.
She spent her down time reading, writing and riding her bike.
Anne also a fascination together with the British royal family and Hollywood movie stars.
Then, in May, 1940, the German occupation on the Netherlands began and Nazi persecutions with the Jewish population increased by 1942.
On the 5th of July, 1942, Anne’s sister, Margot received a “call-up” to report to get a so-called “labour camp” in Nazi Germany.
Her parents were suspicious concerning the “call-up” and realized they to go into hiding as a way to escape the Nazis.
The Secret Annex
The Frank family in addition to three members in the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist, chosen to hide within a concealed Secret Annex behind a bookcase within the building of Otto Frank’s business.
Otto informed Miep Gies, his secretary along with a close and trusted friend in the Frank family he and his family are inclined into hiding and asked her if she would be prepared to help them.
Miep immediately offered her support having seen trucks rich in Jews daily heading to your railway station being taken to Nazi concentration camps.
At their apartment, near the Merwedeplein the place that the Franks had lived prior to going into hiding, Gies and her husband also hid an anti-Nazi undergraduate.
Anne was only thirteen when she and her family went into hiding.
Miep Gies
Hermine “Miep” Gies (née Santrouschitz; 15 February 1909 – 11 January 2010) was Austrian by birth, however in 1920, on the age of eleven, she was consumed in as a foster child by way of a Dutch family in Amsterdam to whom she became very attached.
In 1933, Gies began working at Otto Frank’s Opekta business which manufactured products employed for making jellies and jams.
With her husband Jan along with other Opekta employees, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman and Bep Voskuijl they helped hide the Frank family, the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer inside the upstairs rooms with the company’s business building on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht from 6 July 1942 to 4 August 1944 as they kept the daily running with the business as usual.
Gies would purchase food to the people in hiding from several grocery shops and markets often and never carried several shopping bag or what she could hide under her coat.
Her husband Jan (who belonged to your Dutch resistance), helped by offering ration cards which he had obtained illegally to supply food as well as other supplies on the upstairs prisoners.
Life in Hiding
Life with the eight people within the upstairs apartment, which Anne Frank known as the Secret Annex, was tense.
They lived in constant nervous about being discovered.
They could never take advantage of the freedom with the outdoors.
They needed to remain quiet during day to stop detection by workers inside warehouse below.
During the above years of hiding from the Annex had changed Anne’s feelings where she now appreciated the smallest beauties of life, just like the sun as well as the sound of birds.