“I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains,” this is a quote from the famous diary of the even more famous, Annelies Marie Frank, also known as Anne Frank. Anne Frank was a victim of the dreadful Holocaust. She wrote a diary about all of her experiences throughout the Holocaust and about her and her family having to hide from the Nazis. Her diary was found and published into a well-read book. Anne died at the age of 15. Because of the significance of her life and the young age at which she died she has gone down in the history books as one of the most famous people of the Holocaust.
Anne Frank was a German-Jewish girl born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 12, 1929. Her mother and father’s names were Otto and Edith. She had one sister named Margot. Anne and her family were well off until 1933, when Adolf Hitler came into power. Hitler had hatred like no other for the Jews and blamed them for all that had happened to Germany. Hitler had a political party known as the Nazis. They obeyed on a moments notice. Initially, he made them do harmless things to Jews, but then it progressively got worse. Hitler ordered the Nazis to take Jews to “concentration camps”, where they were put to work and then murdered. From fear of this tragedy happening to them the Franks moved to Amsterdam, Holland.
They were living peacefully in Amsterdam until Margot received a call to report to a transit camp, which meant she would have to go to work for the Germans. None of the Franks wanted Margot to go, so Anne’s father told them to pack their most precious belongings in an unsuspicious bag. Anne went and fetched her school bag and packed some pictures, other personal belongings, and last but not least, her diary. The Franks were on their way to the ‘secret annex’.
The ‘secret annex’ was a hiding place in Anne’s father’s work building in a closet. Once in the closet there is a secret door that opens to a tunnel that leads to some rooms that became their home. Although it was not a mansion, the Frank’s adjusted to their new lifestyle. The Franks were not the only ones who lived in the ‘secret annex’. They were accompanied by four other hiders known as the Van Pels family, which contained Herman, Auguste, and Peter Van Pels, and there was another, a dentist named Fritz Pfeffer.
On August 4, 1944 the family was discovered and arrested by the ruthless Nazis. This arrest came because they were betrayed by one of their helpers. Shortly after the arrest they were taken to a concentration camp called, Bergen-Belson. However, Anne and Margot were taken away from their parents and sent to Auschwitz. In March 1945 Margot died of typhus, and Anne was all alone until April of the same year in which she died of typhus at the age of 15.
In the long run, Anne Frank was one of the most well known victims of the Holocaust. History books tell of a very brave young girl torn away from her life and murdered by the Nazis at a very young age. Her story lives on and will be told to generations to come. Hopefully, you will realize that anything can happen, because for Anne Frank, anything did happen. Anne’s writing, in my opinion, grasps your shoulders and tugs you into the frightful time of the Holocaust. It doesn’t just tell you, it lets you live the life of the young girl, Anne Frank. Don’t take anything for granted because nothing is written in stone except for the past.
