Anne Frank: Her Life and Her Legacy
Excerpted from LIFE'S Anne Frank: Her Life and Her Legacy
Anne Frank at school, writing in her journal, 1940.
Photo by Anne Frank Fonds – Basel via Getty Images
On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank received a small diary for her 13th birthday. She and her family had been living in Amsterdam for nine years after fleeing their native Germany in 1933, when the Nazis gained power and began stripping Jews of their most basic rights. Although the Franks found stability for several years, they could not escape the wave of turmoil and repression sweeping across Europe. Less than a month after Anne received her diary, she and her family went into hiding to avoid being sent to the Nazi camps.
The diary of Anne Frank. Found in the collection of Anne Frank House Museum, Amsterdam. (Credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
For the next two years, Anne confided her innermost thoughts to her diary. Her chronicles of daily life paint a picture of a bright girl—full of hopes and fears and love for her family and friends—navigating the passage from childhood into adulthood in a savagely cruel world that could not crush her heart, imagination, and dreams of the future. In one entry in 1944, she described her love of writing and her desire to make a career of it one day, saying, “I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death.”
Anne Frank’s Friends; From left to right, Eva Goldberg, Sanne Ledermann and Anne, in Merwedeplein, Amsterdam, 1936.
Photo by Anne Frank Fonds – Basel via Getty Images
She got her wish far too soon. Her diary comes to an abrupt end in August of 1944, when she and others hiding in the “Secret Annex” at Prinsengracht 263 were discovered, arrested, and sent to concentration camps. Anne, her sister, Margot, and her mother, Edith, all died there. Her father, Otto, miraculously survived and upon returning to Amsterdam learned of Anne’s diary. He dedicated the rest of his life to sharing her story with the world so that the same tragedy that befell his family and millions of others might never be repeated.
LIFE’s Tribute to Anne Frank
Anne Frank Fonds, Basel/Getty Images
Anne Frank (left) and her sister, Margot, in a portrait from the photo album of Margot, 1933.
Photo by Anne Frank Fonds – Basel via Getty Images
Anne Frank (left), her mother, Edith Frank-Hollander, and her sister, Margot Frank, holding hands at the Hauptwache in Frankfurt, Germany. From Anne Frank’s photo album.
Photo by Anne Frank Fonds – Basel via Getty Images
Photo taken from Anne Frank’s photo album of Mrs Baldal’s class at a Montessori school in Amsterdam, 1935. Anne Frank is sitting in the corner near the door between two desks.
Photo by Anne Frank Fonds – Basel via Getty Images
The exterior of the Amsterdam office-warehouse which was hiding place for the Frank Family.
Courtesy: CSU Archives/Everett Collection
The chestnut tree which comforted Anne Frank while she hid from the Nazis during World War II is seen from the attic window in the secret annex at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, 2007.
AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File
Anne Frank died of typhus in February 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen Concentration camp; here the camp is shown after it was liberated by British troops, April 15, 1945.
Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images
In this deeply troubled time when so many people around the world are divided by religious, racial, and ethnic differences, the lessons of Anne Frank’s life are more important than ever. We would all do well to remember the wisdom of a young girl who taught us that we are all diminished when any person suffers unfairly because of who he or she is—and that our differences make life more interesting, but our common humanity matters more. ❣
