She was born Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank, daughter of Otto and Edith Frank on 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany. She was actually a German citizen until 1941 when she lost her nationality to the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany. She is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
She and her parents moved to Amsterdam in 1933, the same year as the Nazis gained power in Germany. By the beginning of 1940 they were trapped in Amsterdam due to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in the hidden rooms of her father Otto Frank's office building. After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where they both died of typhus in March 1945.
Otto Frank, the only survivor of the family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl. It has since been translated into many languages. The diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 until 1 August 1944.
From 1942 to 1944, the Frank family (Otto, Edith, Anne and her sister Margo),the van Pels family ( Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter) and later by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist hid in the top floors of Otto Frank's office in Amsterdam. That is a picture of the building above. They were turned in to the Gestapo by an unkown person.
The Franks, van Pelses and Pfeffer were taken to the Gestapo headquarters where they were interrogated and held overnight. On 5 August, 1944, they were transferred to the Huis van Bewaring (House of Detention), an overcrowded prison on the Weteringschans. Two days later they were transported to Westerbork. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and were sent to the Punishment Barracks for hard labor.
They were later put on a train to the Auschwitz concentration camp and later moved to Bergen-Belsen where Anne died just weeks before the camp was liberated by the British.
Well, I was in Amsterdam today and saw the building and the statue and thought I would share.
It sure brings a tear to your eye and makes you think, "there but by the grace of God" go I, my children or any of us.
Oh, and if you look close, I am wearing a VRCC denim shirt - so now it is Valkyrie related.
