Anne Frank was a German girl and Jewish victim of the Holocaust who is famous for keeping a diary of her experiences. Anne and her family went into hiding for two years to avoid Nazi persecution. Her documentation of this time is now published in The Diary of a Young Girl.

She was born Annelies Marie Frank on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her parents were Otto and Edith Frank. For the first 5 years of her life, Anne lived with her parents and older sister, Margot, in an apartment on the outskirts of Frankfurt. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Otto Frank fled to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where he had business connections. The rest of the Frank family soon followed, with Anne being the last of the family to arrive in February 1934 after staying with her grandparents in Aachen. 

The Fate of Jews in Amsterdam

The fate of the Frank family and other Jews in Amsterdam was wrapped up with the German occupation of the city, which began in May 1940. In early 1942, the Germans began preparations to deport Jews from the Netherlands to killing centers in the east. At this time, they required all Dutch Jews to be concentrated in Amsterdam. They also decided to intern all non-Dutch Jews in Westerbork transit camp. From Westerbork, German officials deported the Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor killing centers in German-occupied Poland. The first deportation transport left Westerbork on July 15, 1942, for Auschwitz-Birkenau. These deportations and the escalating anti-Jewish measures alarmed many Jews in the Netherlands, including the Franks.