Facts about Anne Frank
Anne Frank Biography
Anne Frank is the best-known victim of the Jewish genocide known as the Holocaust, which was ordered by Germany’s Adolf Hitler during World War II.
When German troops occupied the Netherlands, Anne Frank and her family spent two years hiding from the Nazis in a small set of rooms in Amsterdam, protected by non-Jewish friends. The Franks were finally discovered in August of 1944 and sent to concentration camps; Anne Frank died the next year in a typhus epidemic at the camp at Bergen-Belsen.
Her diary was published in 1947 in the Netherlands under the title Het Achterhuis (in English, The Annex).
The diary was translated into more than 50 languages and sold millions of copies. Now more commonly known as The Diary of Anne Frank, it has remained in print into the 21st century.
Written for herself beginning when she was 13, Frank edited and re-wrote parts before she and her family were captured in August of 1944. She died a few months before her 16th birthday in 1945.
Extra credit
A theatrical version of The Diary of Anne Frank opened on Broadway in 1955, winning the Pulitzer Prize. In 1997 a reworked version of the play appeared on Broadway with Natalie Portman playing Anne Frank.