Anne Frank (1929-1945): A life that inspired millions

Born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany, into a respected Jewish family, Anne Frank and her family would later experience the deprivation and suffering of the Holocaust, Adolph Hitler’s inhuman treatment of millions of European Jews. 

When Hitler came to power in 1933, he enacted anti-Jewish laws, and his intention was to systematically annihilate the Jews, and other so-called undesirables, of Europe. Anne’s businessman father, Otto Frank, soon moved his family to the “safe-haven” of Amsterdam, Holland. But in 1940, Nazi Germany invaded and annexed the Netherlands, prompting Otto Frank to construct a Secret Annex at his business building to house and hide his endangered family. And, in July 1942, the Frank family and the van Pels family went into hiding in the Secret Annex whose entrance was behind an office bookcase. These two families plus one more person, Fritz Pfeffer, eight all together, would spend the next two years living together in hiding while friends brought them food and other basic necessities. 

Just prior to entering the Secret Annex, and on her 13th birthday, June 12,1942, Anne received as a birthday gift a red and white checkered diary with she named “Kitty” and in which she wrote faithfully during the next two years. As she began her diary, she penned these words: “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.”

On Aug. 4, 1944, the eight were betrayed, arrested and transported to a transit camp and subsequently transported in a sealed cattle car to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. Anne’s diary had been overlooked by the Nazi soldiers as they searched the premises and was shortly found and picked up my Miep Gies, Otto’s former business secretary.

Anne, her older sister Margot, their mother, the van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer, seven of the eight, all died while in those death camps. In March 1945, Anne and Margot died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen, a German death camp. Otto Frank was liberated by the Russian Army in January 1945, and was the lone survivor in his family. He had lost his whole family. Some 6 million Jews had been murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust years.

In October 1945, Miep Gies gave Anne’s diary to Otto Frank who had it published in Amsterdam in 1947, with the title: “Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl.” Otto Frank died in 1980, at the age of 91. Anne’s diary has been an inspiration to millions, and God continues to inspire through this powerful little book.