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Anne Frank

© Katie Anne Gustafsson

In the second of a series of articles on Women of the 20th Century, I am taking a look at someone who was little more than a girl on the threshold of becoming a woman when her young life was snuffed out by bigotry.

Although Anne was born 12th June 1929 in Germany (Frankfurt am Main), she spent most of her life in Holland. When Anne was only 4 years old, Hitler's Nazi regime started to take hold of Germany, and Otto Frank, Anne's father, relocated his Jewish family to Amsterdam. The family lived happily there until 1940 when the Nazi's conquered Holland and the Jewish people living there found themselves living under strict conditions imposed by Hitler's regime. For two years they lived like this, hoping that things would not get worse, but making plans just in case. In 1942 it happened. Margot, Anne's elder sister was sent a notice from the Nazi SS that she was to report to a labour camp. On July 15th, less than a month after Anne's thirteenth birthday, the family went into hiding.

Otto Frank's business had a small hidden annex above the working quarters. With the help of his gentile friends to provide food and supplies, the family was able to disappear from the Nazi gaze, although threat of discovery was constant. Eventually eight people would live in the Annex: Anne, her father, mother and sister, Herman and Auguste Van Pels with their son Peter, and a dentist by the name of Pfeffer. For a young energetic girl like Anne, the Annex must have seemed like a prison. Whilst the people downstairs went about their daily routine, unaware of the secret living quarters upstairs, the occupants of the Annex had to be careful not to make any sound that would betray their presence. Apart from the friends who brought them food and supplies, the only contact with the outside world that the occupants of the annex had was on the BBC Broadcasts that they listened to when the workers below them went to lunch.

Anne made use of her time by writing in her, now famous, diary she had been given for her thirteenth birthday. Here she committed to paper her thoughts about life and the people around her. She invented fictitious names for her fellow inmates in the attic. In 1944, after hearing a broadcast by the BBC, Anne decided to rewrite her diary with a view to it being published after the war. In the rewritten version Anne, now 15, removes some of the more childlike comments and outbursts of the original diary such as those against her mother.

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