The Diary of a Young Girl

First published in June 1947, ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ is a classic of war literature and among the most powerful accounts of the Nazi occupation written by Anne Frank, a German girl and Jewish victim of the Holocaust. Anne is renowned for keeping a diary of her experiences. The story of Anne Frank is among the most well-known of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. Her diary is the first encounter many people have with the history of Nazi Germany's attempt to murder all the Jews of Europe during World War II.
The book chronicles the life of Anne Frank, a thirteen-year-old girl fleeing her home in Amsterdam to go into hiding. Anne reveals the relationships between eight people living under tragic conditions—facing hunger, the threat of discovery, and the worst horrors the modern world had seen. It relates how Anne, her family, and their friends hid in secret rooms—‘the Annex’—in an Amsterdam warehouse for 25 months.

In these pages, she grows up to be a young woman and a wise observer of human nature. She shares an exceptional bond with her diary, which holds a detailed account of Anne's close relationship with her father, the lack of daughterly love for her mother, affection for her sister's intelligence, and closeness with her friend Peter. Anne Frank's account presents a captivating self-portrait of a sensitive and high-spirited young woman who turns thoughtful and learns of the many terrors of the world.

Annelies Marie Frank (German pronunciation: [ʔanəliːs maˈʁiː ˈʔanə ˈfʁaŋk]; Dutch pronunciation: [ʔɑnəˈlis maːˈri ˈʔɑnə ˈfrɑŋk]; 12 June 1929 - February 1945) was a German-born diarist and writer. She is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her diary, The Diary of a Young Girl, which documents her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, is one of the world's most widely known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.

Born in the city of Frankfurt, Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Born a German national, Frank lost her citizenship in 1941 and thus became stateless. The Frank family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in the early 1930s when the Nazis gained control over Germany. By May 1940, they were trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in some concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father worked. In August 1944, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died (probably of typhus) in February or March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated in April.

Otto Frank, the only survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that Anne's diary had been saved by one of the helpers, Miep Gies, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, and has since been translated into over 60 languages. The diary, which was given to Anne on her thirteenth birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944.

Bio and photo from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Unknown photographer; Collectie Anne Frank Stichting Amsterdam (Website Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.