Today (01/08/2024) marks 80 years since Anne Frank’s final diary entry. Annelies Marie Frank (12 June 1929–c. February/March 1945) was a German-born Jewish girl who kept a diary documenting her family’s life whilst they hid from Nazi persecution.
On Anne’s thirteenth birthday, 12 June 1942, she received an autograph book from her father, Otto, which she decided to use as a diary. She named it “Kitty”, and wrote each entry as though addressing a close friend:
“I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do in anyone before, and I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me.”[1]
Anne was born in Frankfurt. Following the Nazi Party’s ascent to power in Germany, her family moved to Amsterdam—she was then four and a half years old. By 1940, the Franks were trapped in the city as a result of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In Anne’s early diary entries, she describes many of the restrictions that were placed upon the country’s Jewish population—she wrote of public transport being a “forbidden luxury”, and noted the dangers of being “out after eight o’clock” due to the imposition of a curfew.[2]
The persecution of Jewish people escalated in July 1942, when the Nazis began the systematic deportation of Jews from the Netherlands. On 5 July, Anne’s sister Margot received a “call-up notice” from the Central Office for Jewish Emigration.[3] This hastened the family’s decision to go into hiding, which they did on 6 July, 10 days earlier than they had originally planned.
Their hiding place in Otto’s office building became known as the “Achterhuis” (secret annex), as the entrance was hidden behind a bookcase. Otto’s most trusted employees brought them everything they needed, knowing full well that they could face the death penalty for sheltering Jews. The Franks were later joined by the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer. Anne recorded day-to-day life in hiding in her diary. She described her brief romance with Peter van Pels, reflected upon her difficult relationship with her mother, highlighted her hope to return to school, and wrote of her ambition to become a writer.
Anne’s final diary entry on 1 August 1944 concluded with her “trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if . . . there weren’t any other people living in the world.”[4]
The Franks, Van Pelses, and Pfeffer remained safe for two years. On 4 August 1944, the annex was stormed by the SS. All were arrested and sent to Westerbork transit camp. How the annex was discovered remains unknown; it has been suggested that they could have been betrayed, or that ration card fraud could have prompted the investigation of the building.
The Franks were transported to Auschwitz, where Otto was separated from his wife and daughters. Anne and Margot were later moved to Bergen-Belsen camp, while their mother, Edith, was left behind as she was dying of disease and exhaustion. In February or March of the following year, Margot died from shock when she fell from her bunk in a weakened state. Anne is said to have died the following day from typhus.
Otto Frank was the only member of the family to survive. After the war, he made his way back to Amsterdam, where he heard about the death of his wife. He remained hopeful about the survival of his daughters. But two sisters named Janny and Lien Brilleslijper, who had been at Bergen-Belsen with Anne and Margot, confirmed their deaths in July 1945.
After the secret annex had been raided, two of Otto’s employees, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, salvaged Anne’s notebooks and loose papers, intending to return them should she survive. Hearing of her death, Miep gave the collection to her father. Moved by his daughter’s repeated wish to be an author, after much deliberation he decided to publish the diary, especially as it was evident that she had begun to edit her work for this purpose.
Anne’s story has become deeply embedded in the collective memory of the Holocaust. It serves as a testament to the millions of voices silenced by the Nazis.
[1] Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank (London: Pan Books Ltd, 1954), 12.
[2] Ibid., 18, 21.
[3] Ibid., 24.
[4] Ibid., 222.