World Famous Diary of Anne Frank

I was born on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany. My name is Anne Frank. My father was Otto, a proud German. I lived with my father, my mother Edith and my sister Margot. We were a middle class Jewish Family. My father was a lieutenant in the German army during World War I. He later became a businessman in Germany and the Netherlands. My mother was a stay at home mom. We lived a happy and comfortable life in Germany. My sister was well behaved and polite, I was more of a trouble maker. I was very out spoken. I loved books. I wanted to become a writer when I grew up. In 1918 World War I ended with Germany's defeat. Many Germans were out of work. Prices for everything were very high.

A new leader came into power in 1933, his name was Adolf Hitler. He was born April 20, 1889. He was the Head of the National Socialist party, also known as a Nazi. He made the Germans feel better about themselves. He said real Germans were better than other people, this did not include Jewish people. In his speeches he would blame the Jewish people for the problems Germany was going through. Hitler planned on getting rid of all Jewish people. Jewish people had to live in special neighborhoods and go to different schools. Life was becoming hard for them in Germany. My father saw that Hitler was a dangerous man and decided we should move. At first we went to live in Switzerland with one of my grandmothers. Then, in the fall of 1933 my father moved to Amsterdam, we followed in January of 1934. Amsterdam was a big city in the Netherlands. My father decided to move here because it was close to Germany and there was no problems for Jewish people. My father also spoke Dutch which is the language they speak in the Netherlands. Here my father started a new business making pectin. Pectin is a powder people would use to make jam. We moved into a new apartment and my sister and I started a new school.

We learned to speak the language quickly and also made new friends. One of my best friends was a girl named Hanne. We would ride our bikes and go ice skating together. I also love going swimming and to the movies. I would cut out pictures of movie stars from magazines hoping that one day I would be a movie star. Everything seemed normal in Amsterdam until my uncle Walter, got arrested in Germany for being Jewish. He was sent to a labor camp. It was just like a prison. My father wasn't sure how safe we were going to be in Amsterdam because Hitler was moving closer to the Netherlands. My parents were not sure if we should move again but since my father was already in his fifties and my sister and I were happy here, they decided not to move.

In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland, England and France declared war. This was the start of World War II. The Netherlands did not pick a side. More and more Jewish people came to Amsterdam to be safe but on May 10, 1940 Germany invaded. On the day of the attack, bombs dropped from the sky and destroyed a town called Rotterdam. Thousands of people died. The Germans came into Amsterdam. A few Jewish families were able to escape but my family had to go into hiding. My father gave his business to, two good friends of his who were not Jewish and new how to run it. My sister and I were sent to a special school for Jewish kids. We had to wear yellow stars sown onto our clothes. This way people could see we were Jewish. The star was called the Star of David. All Jewish people had a curfew, we had to be home inside by 8pm. We could not go outside till 6am the next morning. The only good news was the Germans were not able to invade England and on December of 1941 the United States joined the war. My family hoped this would be the end of the war.

The day of the thirteenth birthday my parents gave me a diary. I stated writing in it every day. I called it Kitty. In early July my parents received a letter saying that my sister was being sent to a labor camp. She was ordered to go to the train station but my parents decided to go in hiding. My father and mother had been planning on this for quite some time and had been stocking a secret room in the building were my dad worked with food, furniture and clothes for us to hide. That night we packed our school bags with personal items. We put on as much clothes as possible under our coats and left for the hideout. It was called the Secret Annex.

The Secret Annex was very small. It was about fifty square yards. It was behind a secret door in the building my dad's company was in. Inside there was only two rooms, one with a stove and sink and the other room was the bathroom. The floor above had two small rooms, one for my parents and the other for me and my sister. My mom had put up my post cards and pictures of movie stars. During the day we had to be very quiet so no one would hear us walking around or talking. We hung up sheets on the windows so no one could see any lights at night. About a week later another family moved in with us. They were friends of our family. It was Mr. and Mrs. Van Pel and their son Peter. He was two years older than me. Peter brought his cat, Mouschi.

After being there for five months, a man named Fritz Pfeffer joined us also. My father friend Miep and her husband, Jan Gies were our link to the outside world. They were not Jewish. Also his two friend that took over his business were Victor and Johannes. They would bring us supplies that we needed. These people would risk their lives to bring us food, newspapers and any news from the outside world. A year had come and gone, every page in my diary was filled up. Miep would bring me blank paper so I could continue writing. One day I was listening to the radio and heard a man talking about how after the war the diaries and letters would be published. My dream was to see My Kitty published after the war. I wrote, You've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to become a journalist someday and later on a famous writerI want to publish a book titled The Secret Annex after the war; whether I shall succeed or not, I cannot say.

By the time I turned fifteen we had been in hiding for almost two years. It was June 1944, the war was almost over. My dad would track the progress of our Allies. I began to see freedom. On August 4, 1944 Peter heard shouting from below. Men with guns raised stormed the Annex. It was the Nazi police. After years of being so carful and quite they found us. Someone had betrayed us but we never found out who it was. After we were all taken away Miep snuck in to the Annex and hid our photos and my diary in a desk. We all ended up in a concentration camp, the men on one side and the women on the other. At the camp most people were put to death right away. My sister and I were separated from our mother. We had no life. We struggled to survive. We both came down with a sickness called Typhus. We died in March of 1945. In April British soldiers arrived and freed everyone in the camp. The only person who survived from my family was my father. He returned to Amsterdam hoping to see us but learned that we were dead.

All that was left was our photos and my diary. In the summer of 1947 my diary was published. It was first called The Secret Annex, it was later changed to, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. When all was said and done, Hitler had murdered six million Jews. He ended up killing himself in 1945 inside a secret bunker. My diary became world famous, it has been translated into more than sixty-five languages. In 1960 the Secret Annex was opened to the public and more than one million visitors come every year. The last words I wrote are In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.

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