The Diary Of Anne Frank

   The diary is Anne Frank’s record of her thoughts and comments on everyday existence and adolescent teenage angst, hidden in the “secret annex” on 263 Prisengracht in Amsterdam, Holland, along with her father, Otto; her mother, Edith; her sister, Margot; and the Van Pels-Hermann, Otto’s business associate; Auguste, Hermann’s wife; and their son, Peter. The eighth member of the group was Fritz Pfeffer, a Jewish dentist who shared the room with the 13-year-old Anne. The group lived in close quarters for two years and one month with constant fear of discovery by the Nazis. In August 1944, an informer disclosed their hiding place and the Gestapo arrested Anne, her family, and the others who shared the annex with them. The diary was found and hidden by one of the Frank’s sympathetic former employees, Miep Gies, who helped them survive until their betrayal. Anne and her sister Margot were first sent to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen, where both sisters died of typhus. The diary, whose entries conclude shortly before their arrest, has sold tens of millions of copies and is required reading in schools throughout much of the world. Subsequently, the diary was adapted for the stage, where it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and then a highly successful film.

   See also Het Achterhuis; Silberbauer, Karl.