On the 12th of June 1942, a 13-year-old Jewish girl called Annelies Frank wrote the first entry of what was to become the most famous diary in the world. Born Frank with Germany and her family fled the Nazis in 1933 and settled in Amsterdam, but the situation became perilous again in 1940 when the Nazis occupied Holland and started rounding up the Jewish.
The first few entries in Anne’s diary documented typical crushes and happy life of an ordinary teenager. But in July 1942, Anne, her parents and the older sister Margot had to flee their home after 16-year-old Margot was called up by the authorities together with another Jewish family they hid in a “Secret Annexe” attach to the other frames office building. Dutch reigns risk their own lives smuggling provisions to them.
Lively, sensitive, intelligent Anne poured out her heart into her diary throughout the two years of hiding. She documented the terror, boredom and friction experienced by the group of desperate people thrown together by circumstance. Life was tough in the Annexe.
On week days during office hours the family had to keep quiet to avoid discovery. Anne took refuge in books and writing but she struggled with the expectations of their parents and had a difficult relationship with her mother. She also clashed with overspent Powell’s whom she considered vein and silly. Attentions were often unbearable and Anne sometimes felt her diary was her only friend. The writing shows the developing maturity and precocious talent. Sadly this was not to be fulfilled. Despite her fears for the future and the harsh of war the family heard off the radio, Anne retained her optimism and even fell in love for the first time.
After hearing a radio broadcast about the importance of publishing first hand of concept of war, she began to revise her diary with a view to possible publication, but in August, 1944, the group was betrayed and sent to concentration camps.
A year later, only Arthur was still alive. Anne and Margot died of typhoid at Bergen-Belsen only weeks before the end of the war. Two women had been helping the family found Anne’s diary after they could start their raid and keep it safe until Arthur returned in 1945. He was amazed that his youngest daughters, beautiful and profound writing and later said “I never knew my lovely Anne to be so deep.”
In 1947, an edited version of the diary was published to immediate acclaim and the diary of Anne Frank went on to sell more than 25 million copies. A Pulitzer price winning play in the film part of it and Anne Frank became one of the most powerful voices of the Holocaust that disseminated during Jewish population.
Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg said of Anne’s writings “one voice speaks for six million, the voice not of his age full of hurt of an ordinary little girl.” The Annexe where Anne and her family had became a museum in 1960. Today, Anne Frank house receives close to a million visitors a year.
Recently, letters were uncovered the documented Arthur Franks efforts to secure refuge in the United States in 1941. Sadly even his friend, the earn of Mrs. Department Store was enable to help as the country was closing its doors in the face of desperate Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.
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