Anne Frank's Childhood
Anne Frank's Childhood
Anne Frank's Childhood
A young Jewish girl named Anne Frank (1929-1945), her parents and older sister moved to the
Netherlands from Germany after Adolf Hilter and the Nazis came to power there in 1933 and made life
increasingly difficult for Jews. In 1942, Frank and her family went into hiding in a secret apartment
behind her fathers business in German-occupied Amsterdam. The Franks were discovered in 1944 and
sent to concentration camps; only Annes father survived. Anne Franks diary of her familys time in
hiding, first published in 1947, has been translated into almost 70 languages and is one of the most
widely read accounts of the Holocaust.
In 1960, the building at Prinsengracht 263, home to the Secret Annex, opened to the public as a
museum devoted to the life of Anne Frank. Her original diary is on display there.
By the fall of 1933, Otto Frank moved to Amsterdam, where he established a small but successful
company that produced a gelling substance used to make jam. After staying behind in Germany with
her grandmother in the city of Aachen, Anne joined her parents and sister Margot (1926-45) in the
Dutch capital in February 1934. In 1935, Anne started school in Amsterdam and earned a reputation as
an energetic, popular girl.
In May 1940, the Germans, who had entered World War II in September of the previous year, invaded
the Netherlands and quickly made life increasingly restrictive and dangerous for Jewish people there.
Between the summer of 1942 and September 1944, the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators deported
more than 100,000 Jews in Holland to extermination camps.
Life for the eight people in the small apartment, which Anne Frank referred to as the Secret Annex, was
tense. The group lived in constant fear of being discovered and could never go outside. They had to
remain quiet during daytime in order to avoid detection by the people working in the warehouse below.
Anne passed the time, in part, by chronicling her observations and feelings in a diary she had received
for her 13th birthday, a month before her family went into hiding.
Addressing her diary entries to an imaginary friend she called Kitty, Anne Frank wrote about life in
hiding, including her impressions of the other inhabitants of the Secret Annex, her feelings of
loneliness and her frustration over the lack of privacy. While she detailed typical teenage issues such as
crushes on boys, arguments with her mother and resentments toward her sister, Frank also displayed
keen insight and maturity when she wrote about the war, humanity and her own identity. She also
penned short stories and essays during her time in hiding.
millions of copies worldwide, has been labeled a testament to the indestructible nature of the human
spirit. It is required reading at schools around the globe and has been adapted for the stage and screen.