Anne Frank's diary has been one of the world's best-read books

Its author Anne Frank was born 75 years ago in June 1929 in Frankfurt, central Germany, and was to die less than 16 years later in the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.

She left Germany, aged four, when Hitler came to power in 1933. The family fled to Amsterdam where her father Otto Frank started a new business. But Jews were no longer safe there, either, when the Germans invaded the country in 1940.

Her parents had prepared for a life in hiding and had made all the necessary arrangements well in advance as such an existence offered the sole faint hope of survival.

Anne received the gift of her famous diary on her thirteenth birthday in 1942. Her story has since been translated into more than 50 languages. Two days later, her second entry in the diary told of her presence in the shop when it was purchased.

The first entry confided to the diary itself: "I hope you will be of great support."

*quote1*Indeed the modest diary lived up to its owner's expectations when the plight of Jews in the Netherlands worsened. They were spared the terror of the Gestapo and the humiliation of having to wear a yellow star.

In 1941, Anne switched from the Montessori school to the Jewish lycee. On 5 July 1942, her elder sister Margot was summoned by the SS, and next day the family embarked on their secret life in the hiding place above her father's company, ownership of which had shortly before been forcibly transferred to Dutch people.

They were later joined by the Daan family, their son Peter and another man. Thus life began anew for eight people in the most cramped circumstances.

Anne had intended calling her notes "Het Achterhuis", or the annex, and her diary was published under that title in 1947. The annex was certainly not an idyll even though Anne, who was named Annelies Marie at birth, tried to convince herself otherwise.

She wrote: "Even thought it's damp, a little crooked and slanted, one would hardly find anything as comfortable in Amsterdam, or maybe throughout Holland."

The cramped circumstances for eight people regularly lead to quarrels and the lively and talkative Anne often felt misunderstood. She lived in hope of a better future and dreamed of becoming a writer or journalist after the war.

*quote2*Yet the reality of life in Prinsengracht 263 was different. Anne confronted the scary atmosphere with her childish and teenage hopes. But she could not avoid rows, especially with her mother.

She confided in her fictitious friend "Kitty" (her diary): "She does not even know what I think of the most ordinary things in the world."

Anne did not get on well with her elder sister either. "I am very different from Margot and my mother... I find them so strange."

Anne's only shimmer of light during the difficult existence in subterfuge was her love of Peter Daan.

The family and their four friends managed to survive for two years in the hideaway that could be accessed only via a rotating filing cabinet.

On 4 August 1944, police led by a Viennese inspector discovered the eight Jews after someone gave them away.

The Frank family was taken to concentration camps. Only Anne's father survived and was later able to publish his daughter's diary.

His wife died in Auschwitz. Both Anne and Margot died in Bergen- Belsen of typhus shortly before the liberation.

June 2004

DPA

[Copyright Expatica 2004]

Subject: Life in Germany, Anne Frank