The young Anne Frank (1929-1945)

   Anne Frank was a young girl who won fame for her diary describing the years during World War II when she and her family were forced to hide from the Nazis. Published after her death, her Diary of a Young Girl was praised throughout the world for the honesty, insight, and courage of its young author. The book was later made into a play, The Diary of Anne Frank, and also into a motion picture. Both gained great success.
   Anne Frank was born in Ger­many, the daughter of a Jewish banker. Her father moved his family to Amsterdam in The Netherlands in 1933 because Adolf Hitler was beginning to persecute the Jews in Germany. Hitler's Nazi troops conquered The Netherlands in 1940, and the Frank family began to fear that they would either be killed or be sent to concentration camps in Germany. In July, 1942, Anne Frank, her mother, father, and sister and four other Jews went into hiding in several tiny attic rooms above Mr. Frank's business building in Amsterdam. The eight people remained in the attic rooms for two years, until the Nazis discovered them in August, 1944. In her diary Anne Frank described their experiences and her feelings during the two years of hiding.
   The Nazis sent the Franks and the other four Jews to one of the Auschwitz concentration camps near Oswiecim, Poland. Mrs. Frank died there. Anne and her sister were later sent to a concentration camp at Belsen, Germany, and both died there early in 1945. Of the eight people only Mr. Frank survived the Nazi imprisonment. He found Anne's diary after the war and was persuaded to have it published.