The Diary of Anne Frank

The Diary of Anne Frank.

On June 12 1929 Annelies "Anne" Marie Frank was born. She is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her wartimeinternational fame posthumously when published in 1947. The diary documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. After getting married, Anne's parents Otto and Edith Frank settled in Frankfurt, Germany where they soon had two children: Margot in 1926 and Anne in 1929 Due to the the economic crisis which also empoweredNSDAP Anne's parents, who were Jewish were looking for a means of escape. Life had simply become to dangerous in Germany and in early March 1933 they were able to reach a decision: through his brother-in-law Erich Elias Otto is given an opportunity to set up a company in the Netherlands. The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939. By February 1934 Edith the children had arrived in Amsterdam and the two girls were enrolled in school. The Frank sisters had highly distinct personalities, Margot being well-mannered, reserved, and studious, while Anne was outspoken, energetic, and extroverted. In May 1940 Germany invaded the Netherlands and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon followed. Restrictions keep mounting, both for individuals and forbusiness. When Margot receives a call-up for a German work camp on 5 July 1942 Otto and Edith the dangers have become too great. They take their family into hiding in the hiding place they prepared months before. For her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942 Anne Frank received a book she had shown her father a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an autograph book, bound with red-and-white checkered cloth and with a small lock on the front, Frank she would use it as a diary, and began writing in it almost immediately. While many of her early entries relate the mundane aspects of her life, she also discusses some of the changes that had taken place in the Netherlands since the German occupation. The family was hiding in an attic apartment behind Otto Frank’s business, located at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam together with Otto’s business associate Hermann van Pels, along with his wife Auguste and their son Peter. In an effort to avoid detection, the family left a false trail suggesting they’d fled to Switzerland. A small group of Otto Frank’s employees risked their own lives to smuggle food, supplies and news of the outside world into the secret apartment, whose entrance was situated behind a movable bookcase. The group of later overall 8 people lived in constant fear of being discovered and could never go outside. They had to remain quiet during daytime in order to avoid detection by the people working in the warehouse below. Anne passed the time, in part, by chronicling her observations and feelings in a diary. Anne started each diary 'Dear Kitty' and what followed was an incredibly candid and eloquent account of her life in confinement, expressong her fear, boredom and confusion at the situation she found herself in. On August 4 1944 the Gestapo (discovered the hiding place after being tipped off by an anonymous Dutch caller. This is when Anne's diary ends. Anne and Margot were first sent to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen where both sisters died of typhus in1945 just a few weeks before British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen on April 15 1945 Anne was fifteen years old. Anne's mother, Edith in Auschwitz in early January 1945 Only Anne's father Otto survived the war. Found in the secret apartment after the family was arrested, the diary kept for Anne by Miep Gies one of the people who had helped hiding the Franks. He gave Otto Frank the diary and a bundle of loose notes that she had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne Anne's diary published after the war in many languages and is used in the curriculum of schools all over the world. Anne Frank has become a symbol for the lost promise of the children who died in the Holocaust. At yovisto, we also have a copy of a collection of footage material gathered by the US Department of Defense as part of the effort to conduct war crimes trials in the direct aftermath of World War II. Please be advised that this video might contain content that is not suitable for all ages.

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