Anne Frank Biography and List of Works

Anne Frank's world famous diary charts two years of her life from 1942 to 1944, when her family were hiding in Amsterdam from German Nazis. The diary begins just before the family retreated into their 'Secret Annexe' and records some of the restrictions faced by the Dutch Jews under the Nazis.

"Whoever is happy will make others happy too. He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!"
(from Anna Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, 1952)

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany. The family fled from the Nazis to The Netherlands in 1933. After the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands Anne's sister received a notice to report to the Nazis. The family went hiding with four other friends in a sealed-off office flat in Amsterdam.

In 1944 Gestapo was informed of the flat - from 10 000 Jews, who went into hiding, some 5 000 were betrayed. SS Officer Karl Joseph Silberbauer - found in the 1960s by Simon Wiesenthal - arrested the Frank and the Van Pels families. The Franks were transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where Anne's mother died. Anne and her sister were transferred from the Dutch concentration camp, Westerbork, to Bergen-Belsen where they both died of typhus.

Otto Frank's secretary Miep Gies, who had searched the hiding place, gave Otto Frank the diary after the war. It was published in 1947 as HET ACHTERHUIS. The diary has been translated into some 60 languages since its publication. First translation into English was made in 1952 and published under the title The Diary of a Young Girl. It was adapted into a motion picture in 1959, directed by George Stevens.

The Diary - Anne Frank received a diary in 1942 for her 13th birthday, and wrote in an early entry: "I hope that you will be a great support and comfort to me." She depicted in her diaries the nightmare reality of eight persons crowded into tiny living quarters, in fear of being discovered, but also her dreams, hopes and feelings of a young girl on the verge of womanhood. "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are still truly good at heart..." But there were moments of doubt, impatience, and rage: "I simply can't built up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death." The poignancy of the diary is increased by her use of epistolary form. The letters are addressed, in the absence of her friends, to the imaginary 'Kitty'.

Frank started to write at school, and planned to become a writer. When she heard from radio broadcast from London about the importance of war diaries and letters, and possible publication, she changed the style of her diaries. On May 20, 1944 she decided to rewrite her earlier texts, and in two and half months she produced 324 handwritten pages, which she entitled HET ACHTERHUIS.

The family was betrayed before Frank finished her work. The final entry is 1 August 1944. On 4 August they were arrested. After war Otto Frank combined her daughter's writings, earlier and later, into version C, which became known as the Diary of Anne Frank. First it did not sell well, but when the diary gained a wide fame in the United States, where it was dramatized and filmed, the lively and moving book sold most copies in the world in the 1960s and 1970s. Also Anne Frank Huis - the hiding-place - was opened in Amsterdam on the Prinsengracht 263. The house was given by its owner to the Anne Frank foundation.

The authenticity of the diary was examined in the 1980s, when neo-Nazis claimed that it was forged. All the versions of Anne Frank's texts were published in 1986. However, Otto Frank had put aside before the publication of the book five diary pages, giving them later to his close friend, Cor Suijk. In these pages Anne Frank depicted her parents marriage, defended her mother, and hoped that nobody would see her writings. In 1995 selections of diary suppressed by Otto Frank were made public.

Who betrayed the Frank family? - In the late 1940 Otto Frank's warehouse man Willem Van Maaren was under the investigations. Due to the lack of evidence the process was stopped, but opened again in the 1960s. No evidence was found. In the 1980s a new name came up: Lena Van Bladeren, who worked in the office as a cleaning woman.

For further information: Anne Frank: A Biography by Melissa Müller; Anne Frank: The Missing Chapter, Dateline Productions (document film, 1998); Roses from the Earth by Carol Ann Lee (1999); The Story of Anne Frank by Mirjam Pressler (1999)

Battle over the American stage adaptation of Anne Frank's diary: In his book The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank author Ralph Melnick documented how Anne Frank's diary was staged in New York. Originally correspondent Mayer Levin adapted it for a stage play, but then a "less Jewish" version was produced by Lillian Hellman. She helped with the last of eight drafts of the play. Anne's words, "Perhaps through Jewish suffering the world will learn good" were revised in the play to "Jews were not the only ones who suffered from the Nazis." The production was a major success and earned a Pulizer. Kevin spent the rest of his life, three decades, fighting for the right to produce his version.

Other famous diaries: Samuel Pepys (started in 1660, ended the first in 1669), Jonathan Swift, James Boswell, Sir Walter Scott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, André Gide's Journals (1889-1951), Katherine Mansfield, Anaïs Nin - fictional diaries: Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Years (1722), Georges Bernanos' Journal d'un curé de Campaigne (1936)

HET ACHTERHUIS, (1947)