Anne Frank: the power of a young girl's voice echoing through history

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt on 12 June 1929 to Otto and Edith Frank, who were part of the educated Jewish middle class that valued education, culture, and community involvement.

Her father had served as an officer in the German Army during the First World War, but after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and antisemitic policies gained legal force, he moved the family to the Netherlands and set up a business in Amsterdam, where he hoped to escape the worsening situation in Germany. 

The family initially found security in their new country, and Anne, who attended the Montessori school, adjusted quickly to her new surroundings.

She formed friendships and experienced a childhood that the war largely did not affect.

After the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the Nazi regime set racial laws similar to those already enforced in Germany.

These included when Jews had to wear the yellow star starting in May 1942, exclusion from public schools, the taking of Jewish-owned businesses, a ban on Jews using public transport, and limits on movement and work. 

Otto Frank, as the threat to his family grew, began to prepare a hidden apartment behind his business office at Prinsengracht 263.

When the Nazis ordered Margot Frank to report for forced labour in July 1942, the family went into hiding the next day.

They brought only what they could carry and left their apartment in a state that suggested they had fled in a hurry to avoid suspicion. 

During their first weeks in hiding, Anne began writing in her diary with greater intensity and purpose, and although it had started as a private record of her thoughts and feelings, she gradually revised it with the hope that it could be published after the war.

She assigned pseudonyms to those in hiding and gave candid, detailed observations about how people interacted, what caused tension between them and what they looked forward to.

She addressed most of her entries to an imaginary friend named "Kitty," which gave the diary a conversational and intimate tone. 

The space in which the family hid was called the Secret Annex, which had a usable floor space of about 75 square metres.

It eventually became home to eight people who had to remain quiet during the day and could only move about freely at night once the office workers had left the building.

Otto and Edith Frank shared the space with their daughters, as well as Hermann and Auguste van Pels, their teenage son Peter, and a dentist named Fritz Pfeffer who joined the group on 16 November 1942. 

In order to avoid discovery, everyone followed a strict routine and relied on the support of four trusted employees, Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies, and Bep Voskuijl, who provided food, newspapers, medicine, and news of the outside world.

Bep's father, Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, built the revolving bookcase that concealed the entrance to the annex.

The helpers faced constant danger because helping Jews could lead to imprisonment or deportation, yet they continued to risk their lives every day for two years. 

Meals consisted mostly of preserved foods such as potatoes, beans, and canned vegetables, and as the war progressed and rationing worsened, the group often went hungry, especially during the cold Dutch winter of 1944.

The stress caused by confinement triggered rising tensions among the inhabitants, and Anne recorded frequent disagreements over noise, hygiene, and the scarcity of food.

However, she also wrote about moments when they found peace and shared laughter that strengthened their bonds and lifted their spirits. 

Anne’s writing matured during this time, and she often reflected on themes such as justice, gender roles, human nature, and her desire to become a writer.

Her growing romantic relationship with Peter van Pels provided emotional support during long months of isolation, though she questioned the depth of her feelings in later entries.

She described herself in two ways, one cheerful and sociable, the other introspective and serious, and used her diary to explore both. 

Her final entry, dated 1 August 1944, offered no indication that their time in hiding was about to end.

Just three days later, their hiding place was discovered, and the diary, left behind in a drawer, was saved by Miep Gies. 

On the morning of 4 August 1944, a group of Dutch and German police officers led by SS-Oberscharführer Karl Silberbauer raided the building after getting a secret tip about the secret apartment.

All eight people in hiding were arrested, along with two of their helpers, and were first taken to the Gestapo headquarters on the Euterpestraat in Amsterdam before being sent to the Westerbork transit camp on 8 August. 

The deportation to Auschwitz followed on 3 September 1944. It was the last train to leave the Netherlands carrying Jewish prisoners, and its arrival at the camp was the beginning of the final chapter in Anne’s life.

The train, which transported 1,019 people, took three days to reach its destination.

Men and women were separated on arrival, and Otto Frank, who remained at Auschwitz, never saw his wife or daughters again.

Anne and Margot were later sent to Bergen-Belsen on 28 October 1944, where conditions had got much worse because of overcrowding, lack of food and disease. 

By early 1945, both sisters had contracted typhus, which spread rapidly among the prisoners.

Witnesses later recalled seeing them in a state of exhaustion and despair, and sometime in February or March, Anne died, followed closely by Margot.

The Red Cross estimated Anne died in March, but research from the Anne Frank House suggests she probably died in February.

Their bodies were buried in an unmarked mass grave. Of the eight people taken from the annex, only Otto Frank survived. 

The question of who betrayed the Frank family has never been answered for certain, despite many investigations by Dutch authorities, journalists and historians over the past eighty years.

Theories have ranged from deliberate betrayal by a neighbour to accidental discovery by warehouse workers who became suspicious of unusual deliveries and noises in the building. 

One early suspicion focused on Willem van Maaren, a warehouse assistant employed in the building, who reportedly acted with curiosity and suspicion toward the annex.

However, several post-war investigations failed to find clear evidence linking him to the betrayal. His involvement, although plausible, is unproven. 

A more recent theory put forward in 2022 suggested that a Jewish notary, Arnold van den Bergh, may have passed on the address of the annex to Nazi authorities in an effort to protect his own family.

The claim came from a five-year investigation led by former FBI agent Vince Pankoke and included indirect evidence, including a post-war note addressed to Otto Frank.

The findings drew criticism from Holocaust scholars and the Anne Frank House, who argued that the evidence did not meet accepted historical standards. 

While efforts to solve the mystery have drawn on many resources, the truth behind the betrayal may never be known with certainty.

The war created an atmosphere of fear and desperation that made survival paramount, and records that might have confirmed the culprit were likely lost or destroyed in the chaotic final months of the occupation. 

After Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam and learned of the deaths of his wife and daughters, Miep Gies gave him Anne’s diary, which she had hidden in a desk drawer following the arrest.

Reading her words, Otto discovered the day-to-day experiences of their life in hiding. 

He first shared typed excerpts with friends and relatives who urged him to publish the diary.

A Dutch publisher, Contact Publishing in Amsterdam, released the first edition, Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex), in 1947.

It was edited by Otto and including selected entries from Anne’s original and revised drafts.

The quickly book gained attention for its emotional impact and clear writing. 

The English-language version, The Diary of a Young Girl, was published in 1952 by Doubleday in the United States and Vallentine Mitchell in the United Kingdom.

It introduced Anne’s story to a global audience, as it was translated into many languages, turned into plays and films, and taught in schools worldwide as an entry point to understanding the Holocaust from a personal perspective.

The diary's power came from its ability to convey universal emotions: fear, loneliness, hope, and the desire to be heard.

During the post-war decades, the diary faced accusations by Holocaust deniers, but forensic checks and work by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation confirmed it was genuine and that Anne wrote it. 

In 1960, the Anne Frank House officially opened as a museum, keeping the rooms where the family hid and showing the original artefacts, including Anne’s red-checkered diary.

Millions of visitors have since walked through the narrow staircase behind the bookcase and stood in the same rooms where Anne wrote her observations.

Today, her memory is kept by both the Anne Frank Stichting in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel, the latter of which was founded by Otto Frank in 1963 to manage her literary estate and promote human rights education. 

Anne Frank’s diary did not survive because of the fame of her family. It survived because readers recognised in her words a truth that history books alone could never capture.