Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt on 12 June 1929 to Otto and Edith Frank, a assimilated German-Jewish family. They emigrated to Amsterdam in 1934 to escape the new Nazi regime. Otto established a pectin and spice business at 263 Prinsengracht.
Germany occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. The Nazi-administered restrictions on Dutch Jews tightened progressively across 1941-1942. On 5 July 1942 Anne’s older sister Margot received a deportation summons to a German “work camp.” The family went into hiding the next morning in the concealed Secret Annex behind Otto’s Prinsengracht office. They were joined within days by the van Pels family (Hermann, Auguste, and their teenage son Peter) and in November 1942 by the dentist Fritz Pfeffer — eight people in approximately 50 square metres of attic space behind a moveable bookcase.
Otto’s business employees Miep Gies, Bep Voskuijl, Johannes Kleiman, and Victor Kugler concealed and supplied them for 25 months.
The diary
Anne began the diary on her 13th birthday — 12 June 1942 — a red-and-white plaid-covered notebook her father had given her. She continued writing for 25 months, addressing the entries to an imaginary friend “Kitty.” Her 1944 revision pass — based on a March 1944 BBC broadcast urging Dutch civilians to preserve war diaries for post-war historical purposes — polished the text for future publication.
The final entry is dated 1 August 1944.
4 August 1944
The annex was raided on the morning of 4 August 1944. The raiders were led by SS-Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer with a mixed German-Dutch police squad. The source of the denunciation has been disputed for 80 years. The 2022 cold-case reinvestigation by Dutch journalist Pieter van Twisk identified the Jewish notary Arnold van den Bergh as the most plausible source — a conclusion heavily criticised by other Holocaust historians as under-evidenced.
The eight occupants were transferred to Auschwitz on 3 September 1944 in the last Dutch deportation train. Edith Frank died at Auschwitz on 6 January 1945. Hermann van Pels was gassed on arrival. Anne and Margot were transferred to Bergen-Belsen in October 1944.
Anne and Margot both died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in February or early March 1945 — the exact dates are not recorded. They had been weeks short of the 15 April 1945 British liberation of the camp. Anne was 15.