Anne Frank

On June 12, 1929, at 7:30 A.M. a baby girl was born in Frankfurt, Germany. No one realized that this infant, who was Jewish, was destined to become one of the world’s most famous victims of World War II. Her name was Anne Frank, and her parents were Edith Frank Hollandar and Otto Frank. She had one sister, Margot, who was three years older than she was.

Anne led a happy and normal childhood, and on her 13th birthday she received a diary from her parents. It became special to her as years went by. It is through this diary that much about World War II and Anne’s life has been learned.

In 1933, her and her family left Frankfurt, a large Jewish community, and settled in Amsterdam. Her father foresaw that Hitler’s power boded disaster for the Jews. In May 1940, the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands took place, which cast a shadow on Anne’s happy childhood. The situation became worse with the restrictions placed on the Jews. One restriction was that Jewish children were only allowed at Jewish schools. Anne went to the Jewish school called The Jewish Lyceum.

In July 1942, Anne’s family went into hiding in the Prinsengracht building. Anne’s family called it the “Secret Annex”. During these times people they knew like, Miep and Jan Gies and many others, brought the family’s food. You would have to be very brave to take on a job like that because, if you got caught you could be killed.

Life in the Annex was not easy at all. Anne had to wake up at 6:45 A.M. every morning. Nobody could go outside. No one could turn on lights at night. Anne mostly read books or wrote stories. Much of Anne’s diary was written while in hiding. Most of the families got separated, but Anne’s family never was. For this, they were lucky.

In 1944, their hiding place was revealed, and they were taken into custody. The day after their arrest they were transferred to the Huis Van Bewaring, a prison on Weteringschans. On Aug. 8, they were transported from the main railroad station in Amsterdam to the Westerbork detention camp. For a month, the Franks were kept in the “disciplinary barracks”, not as ordinary prisoners, but inmates convicted of a crime. The crime was hiding.

On September 3, 1944, aboard the last transport to leave the Netherlands, Anne’s family and those who were with them, were brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. By then more than 100,000 Dutch Jews had been ...

... middle of paper ...

...

Auschwitz, near Krakow, was the largest concentration camp, with inmates from all over Europe. Many Jewish and non-Jewish inmates performed industrial labor. The Nazis subjected some prisoners to medical experiments and gassed Jews and Roma (Gypsies). They also shot thousands of inmates, while others died from starvation or disease. Large crematories were constructed to incinerate the bodies. By the end of the war in 1945, millions of Jews-as wee as Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, and others targeted by the Nazis-had been killed or had died in the Holocaust.

In my opinion Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl is a very sad, distressing book. It revels the life of a young innocent girl who is forced into hiding from the Nazis because of her religion, Judaism. It is also a very informing and very enlightening book. It introduces a time period of discrimination, unfair judgment, and power crazed individuals. With this it shows you the effect it has on the defenseless. Anne and her family are just one of the hundreds of thousands of families that were tortured. The thing that makes her story so intriguing is that it shows war in the eyes of a little girl.