Who was Anne Frank?
Annelies Marie Frank, better known as Anne Frank, was a Jewish girl victim of the Holocaust. She was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 12, 1929. Otto and Edith Frank, her parents, and her older sister, Margot, lived with Anne in her first five years in her hometown.
Therefore, with the arrival of the Nazis to power in their country, Anne's family fled to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, where her father, Otto, had business contacts, as exposed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Anne became known thanks to the accounts she narrated in her diary, which she won on her 13th birthday. She told what the family's experience was like to live in the "secret annex" - a hiding place that was behind the offices that Otto Frank worked and where the family began to take shelter because of the Nazi persecution.
“After May 1940, the good times were few and very spaced: first came the war, then the capitulation, then the arrival of the Germans, and it was then that the sufferings of the Jews began.”
— Excerpt from one of Anne Frank's accounts in her diary
Anne's dream of publishing her diary
Anne began writing it in 1942, when she turned 13 years old. There, she expressed fears, hopes and her experiences at the time. On March 28, 1944, she heard a radio broadcast from the Dutch government asking the community to write diaries, letters and articles capable of documenting life under the German occupation.
In this, Anne saw an opportunity from there. Motivated, she began to review her diary with the hope of publishing them after the war, with the title "Secret Annex", according to the American Museum.
She transferred almost two-thirds of her diary from the original notebooks to loose pages — from May 20, 1944 until her arrest on August 4, 1944 — making some modifications during the process.
When Anne began rewriting her diary, she and others were discovered and arrested by police officers on August 4, 1944.
Even with the invasion, part of Anne's writing was preserved. The helpers who were arrested along with her took the documents before the Secret Annex was emptied by order of the Nazis.
Anne is sent to Auschwitz
According to the offices of Sicherheitsdienst (the German security police), a prison in Amsterdam and the Westerbork transit camp, the people from the Secret Annex were transported to a concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. On the train, the trip lasted three days, during which Anne and more than a thousand other people were huddled. There was little food and water and only one barrel as a bathroom.
The Nazi doctors checked who could or could not do heavy forced labor. Anne, Margot and her mother were sent to the women's labor camp. Otto went to a men's camp.
Anne's death
Anne was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with Margot in early November 1944. Her parents stayed in Auschwitz. Due to the conditions in Bergen-Belsen, Anne and Margot died of typhus in February 1945. Margot died first and Anne passed soon after.
Otto was the only one from the Secret Annex to survive the war. When he was released from Auschwitz by the Russians, during his journey back to the Netherlands, he learned that his family was no longer alive.
Anne Frank's diary
Translated to about 70 languages and adapted for theater and cinema, people from all over the world have had and have access to Anne's story. Otto hoped that the readers of the diary would become aware of the dangers of discrimination, racism and hatred of Jews.
Anne Frank's story can teach us a lot. Her history teachs of the importance of hope and resilience in the face of chaos, and is an example of human capacity for good, even in dark times. In a time of hatred and anger, we can all learn from Anne Frank's example of love.
Anne Frank, a wonderful woman!
* https://www.nationalgeographicbrasil.com/historia/2023/06/quem-foi-anne-frank-os-5-fatos-que-voce-nao-conhecia
* https://letrascriativas.com/blog/vazios/diario-de-anne-frank/
* https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/who-was-anne-frank/
REPORTER: Sarah Sena
EDITOR: Nathália Messias
