Age, Biography and Wiki
- Full Name: Annelies Marie Frank
- Nickname: Anne
- Date of Birth: June 12, 1929
- Place of Birth: Frankfurt am Main, Germany
- Death Date: March 12, 1945 (age 15, in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp)
- Occupation: Diarist, Holocaust victim
- Notable Work: “The Diary of a Young Girl”
Anne Frank was born into a Jewish family and moved to Amsterdam at a young age. During World War II, her family went into hiding from Nazi persecution for over two years. Anne documented her experiences in a diary, which has since become a vital historical document and a symbol of resilience during the Holocaust.
| Occupation | Writers |
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| Date of Birth | 12 June 1929 |
| Age | 96 Years |
| Birth Place | Frankfurt, Germany |
| Horoscope | Gemini |
| Country | Germany |
Height, Weight & Measurements
- Height: 5'5" (165 cm)
- Weight and Measurements: Not formally documented due to the era and circumstances of her life.
On 3 May 1957, a group of Dutch citizens, including Otto Frank, established the Anne Frank Stichting (Anne Frank Foundation) to rescue the Prinsengracht building from demolition and to make it accessible to the public. The Anne Frank House opened on 3 May 1960, consisting of the Opekta warehouse and offices and the Achterhuis—all unfurnished so visitors can walk freely through the rooms. Some personal memorabilia of the former occupants remain, such as movie star photographs glued by Anne to a wall; a section of wallpaper on which Otto Frank marked the height of his growing daughters; and a map on the wall where he recorded the advance of the Allied Forces, all now protected behind acrylic glass.
| Height | 165 cm |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Anne Frank was unmarried and had no documented romantic relationships. She expressed her feelings and thoughts about friendship and early romantic interests in her diary, primarily focusing on her experiences and emotions while in hiding.
In 1934, when she was four and a half, Frank and her family moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party gained control over Germany. By May 1940, the family was trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupation of the Netherlands. Frank lost her German citizenship in 1941 and became stateless. Despite spending most of her life in the Netherlands and being a de facto Dutch national, she never officially became a Dutch citizen. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in rooms concealed behind a bookcase in the building where Frank's father, Otto Frank, worked. The family was arrested two years later by the Gestapo on 4 August 1944.
She had an older sister, Margot. The Franks were Reform Jews, and so did not practice all the customs and traditions of Judaism. They lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of various religions. Edith and Otto were devoted parents with interest in scholarly pursuits. They had an extensive library and both parents encouraged the children to read.
In 1933, after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won the federal election and Hitler was appointed chancellor of the Reich, Edith Frank and the children went to stay with her mother Rosa Hollander (née Stern) in Aachen. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organize the business and arrange accommodation for his family. He began working at the Opekta Works, a company that sold pectin, a fruit extract. Edith travelled back and forth between Aachen and Amsterdam and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in the Rivierenbuurt neighbourhood of Amsterdam, where many Jewish-German refugees settled. In November 1933, Edith followed her husband and a month later Margot also moved to Amsterdam. Anne stayed with her grandmother until February, when the entire family reunited in Amsterdam. The Franks were among 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between 1933 and 1939.
In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company, Pectacon, a wholesaler of herbs, pickling salts and mixed spices, used in the production of sausages. Hermann van Pels was employed by Pectacon as an advisor about spices. A Jewish butcher, he had fled Osnabrück with his family. In 1939, Edith Frank's mother Rosa came to live with the Franks and remained with them until her death in January 1942.
Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were the only employees who knew of the people in hiding. Along with Gies' husband Jan Gies and Voskuijl's father Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, they were the "helpers" for the duration of confinement. The only connection between the outside world and the occupants of the house, the helpers kept the occupants informed of war news and political developments. They catered to all the Franks' needs, ensured their safety and supplied them with food, a task that grew more difficult over time. Anne wrote of their dedication and efforts to boost morale within the household during the most dangerous times. All were aware that, if caught, they could face the death penalty for sheltering Jews.
In her writing, Anne examined her relationships with the members of her family and the strong differences in each of their personalities. She was closest emotionally to her father, who later said: "I got on better with Anne than with Margot, who was more attached to her mother. The reason for that may have been that Margot rarely showed her feelings and didn't need as much support because she didn't suffer from mood swings as much as Anne did." The Frank sisters formed a closer relationship than before they went into hiding, although Anne sometimes expressed jealousy towards Margot, particularly when members of the household criticized Anne for lacking Margot's gentle and placid nature. As Anne began to mature, the sisters were able to confide in each other. In her entry of 12 January 1944, Frank wrote, "Margot's much nicer... She's not nearly so catty these days and is becoming a real friend. She no longer thinks of me as a little baby who doesn't count."
Anne frequently wrote of her difficult relationship with her mother, and her ambivalence towards her. On 7 November 1942, she described her "contempt" for her mother and her inability to "confront her with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hard-heartedness" before concluding, "She's not a mother to me." Later, however, as she revised her diary, Anne felt ashamed of her harsh attitude, writing: "Anne, is it really you who mentioned hate, oh Anne, how could you?" She came to understand that their differences resulted from misunderstandings that were as much her fault as her mother's and saw that she had added unnecessarily to her mother's suffering. With this realization, Frank began to treat her mother with a degree of tolerance and respect.
And if I don't have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can't imagine living like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! ...
In 2015, Flemish journalist Jeroen De Bruyn and Joop van Wijk, Bep Voskuijl's youngest son, wrote a biography in which they alleged that Bep's younger sister (their aunt) Nelly (1923–2001) could have betrayed them. She was a Nazi collaborator from the age of 19 to 23, and had run away to Austria with a Nazi officer but returned to Amsterdam in 1943 after the relationship ended. Nelly had been critical of Bep and their father, Johannes Voskuijl, for helping the Jews; Johannes had constructed the bookcase covering the entrance to the hiding place and remained as an unofficial watchman of the hideout. In one of their quarrels, Nelly shouted to them, "Go to your Jews!" Karl Josef Silberbauer, the SS officer who made the arrest, was reported to have said that the informer had "the voice of a young woman."
In January 2022, a team of investigators including former FBI agent Vince Pankoke proposed Arnold van den Bergh, a member of Amsterdam's Jewish Council who died in 1950, as the suspected informant. The investigators postulated that Van den Bergh gave up the Franks to save his own family. The investigation is chronicled in Rosemary Sullivan's English-language book, The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation. Evidence was also claimed to have been found that Anne Frank's father later knew this but did not reveal it after the war. According to the BBC, these investigators "spent six years using modern investigative techniques to crack the 'cold case...'" However, according to The New York Times, several World WarII and Holocaust scholars have doubted the investigators' methods and conclusions, calling the evidence "far too thin".
On 3 September 1944, the Secret Annex group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp and arrived after a three-day journey. On the same train was Bloeme Evers-Emden, an Amsterdam native who had befriended Margot and Anne in the Jewish Lyceum (Amsterdam) in 1941. Bloeme saw Anne, Margot and their mother regularly in Auschwitz. She was interviewed for her remembrances of the Frank women in Auschwitz in the television documentary The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (1988) by Dutch filmmaker Willy Lindwer and in the BBC documentary Anne Frank Remembered (1995).
Upon arrival at Auschwitz, the SS forcibly split the men from the women and children, and Otto Frank was separated from his family. Those deemed able to work were admitted into the camp; those deemed unfit for labor were immediately killed. Of the 1,019 passengers, 549—including all children younger than 15—were sent directly to the gas chambers. Anne, who had turned 15 three months earlier, was one of the youngest spared from her transport. Soon becoming aware that most people were gassed upon arrival, she never learned that the entire group from the Secret Annex had survived this selection. She reasoned that her father, in his mid-fifties and not particularly robust, had been killed immediately after they were separated.
With the other women and girls not selected for immediate death, Frank was forced to strip naked to be disinfected, her head shaved, and her arm tattooed with an identifying number. By day, the women were used as slave labor and Anne was forced to haul rocks and dig rolls of sod; by night, they were crammed into overcrowded barracks. Some witnesses later testified that Anne became withdrawn and tearful when she saw children being led to the gas chambers. Others reported that more often, she displayed strength and courage. Her gregarious and confident nature allowed her to obtain extra bread rations for her mother, her sister and herself. Disease was rampant; before long, Anne's skin became badly infected by scabies. The Frank sisters were moved into an infirmary, which was in a state of constant darkness and infested with rats and mice. Edith Frank stopped eating, saving every morsel of food for her daughters and passing her rations to them through a hole she made at the bottom of the infirmary wall.
In October 1944, the Frank women were scheduled to join a transport to the Liebau labor camp in Lower Silesia. Bloeme Evers-Emden was scheduled to be on this transport, but Anne was prohibited from going because of her scabies and her mother and sister opted to stay with her. Bloeme went on without them.
Tents were erected at Bergen-Belsen to accommodate the influx of prisoners; and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased rapidly. Anne was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar and Nanette Blitz, who were also confined in the camp. Blitz had been moved from a part of camp called the Sternlager to the same section of the camp as Anne on 5 December 1944, while Goslar had been held in the Sternlager since February 1944. Both women survived the war and later discussed the conversations they had with Anne, Blitz in person and Goslar through a barbed wire fence. Blitz described Anne as bald, emaciated and shivering, and remarked that "the shock of seeing her in this emaciated state was indescribable". Anne told her that she hoped to write a book based on her diary when the war ended. Goslar noted that Auguste van Pels was with Anne and Margot, and that he was caring for Margot, who was severely ill, although she also recalled she did not see Margot because she was too weak to leave her bunk. Blitz, however, stated she met with both the Frank sisters. Anne told both Blitz and Goslar that she believed her parents were dead and for that reason she did not wish to live any longer. Goslar later estimated their meetings had taken place in late January or early February 1945.
Witnesses later testified that Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock, and that Anne died a day after Margot. The dates of Margot's and Anne's deaths were not recorded. It was long thought that their deaths occurred only a few weeks before British troops liberated the camp on 15 April 1945, but research in 2015 indicated that they may have died as early as February. Among other evidence, witnesses recalled that the sisters displayed typhus symptoms by 7 February, and Dutch health authorities reported that most untreated typhus victims died within twelve days of their first symptoms. Additionally, Hanneli Goslar stated her father, Hans Goslar, died one or two weeks after their first meeting; and it is known that Hans died on 25 February 1945.
Otto Frank survived his internment in Auschwitz. After the war ended, he returned to Amsterdam in June 1945, where he was sheltered by Jan and Miep Gies as he attempted to locate his family. He learned of the death of his wife, Edith, during his journey to Amsterdam, but remained hopeful that his daughters had survived. After several weeks, however, he discovered that Margot and Anne had also died. He attempted to determine the fates of his daughters' friends and learned that many had been killed. Sanne Ledermann, often mentioned in Anne's diary, had been gassed along with her parents; but her sister, Barbara Ledermann, a close friend of Margot's, had survived. Several of the Frank sisters' school friends had survived, as had the extended families of Otto and Edith Frank, as they had fled Germany during the mid-1930s, with individual family members settling in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In July 1945, after the sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper, who were with Anne and Margot Frank in Bergen-Belsen, confirmed the deaths of the sisters, Miep Gies gave Anne's father her notebooks (including the red-and-white checkered diary) and a bundle of loose notes that she and Bep Voskuijl had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realized Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding. In his memoir, he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognising the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter. He saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting: "For me it was a revelation... I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings... She had kept all these feelings to herself."
Moved by Anne's repeated wish to be an author, Otto Frank began to consider having it published. To produce the first version for publication, he used Anne's original diary, known as "version A", and her edited version, known as "version B." Although he restored the true identities of his own family, he retained all the other pseudonyms. He gave the diary to the historian Annie Romein-Verschoor, but she was unsuccessful in having it published. She then gave it to her husband Jan Romein, and he wrote an article about it titled Kinderstem (A Child's Voice), which was published in the newspaper Het Parool (The Watchword) on 3 April 1946. He wrote that the diary, "stammered out in a child's voice, embodies all the hideousness of fascism, more so than all the evidence at Nuremberg put together." His article attracted attention from publishers, and the diary was published in the Netherlands as Het Achterhuis (The Annex) (literally, "the back house") in 1947, followed by five more printings by 1950.
Cornelis Suijk—a former director of the Anne Frank Foundation and president of the U.S. Center for Holocaust Education Foundation—announced in 1999 that he had five pages of the diary that had been removed by Otto Frank before publication. Suijk claimed that Otto Frank gave these pages to him shortly before he died in 1980. The missing entries contain critical remarks by Anne about her parents' strained marriage and discuss her lack of affection for her mother. Some controversy ensued when Suijk claimed publishing rights over the five pages. He intended to sell them to raise money for his foundation, but the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, the manuscript's formal owner, demanded the pages be handed over. In 2000 the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science agreed to donate US$300,000 to Suijk's foundation, and the pages were returned in 2001. Since then, they have been included in new editions of the diary.
Otto Frank spent the remainder of his life as custodian of his daughter's legacy, remarking: "It's a strange role. In the normal family relationship, it is the child of the famous parent who has the honor and the burden of continuing the task. In my case the role is reversed." He recalled his publisher's explaination of why he thought the diary has been so widely read, with the comment that "he said that the diary encompasses so many areas of life that each reader can find something that moves him personally." Simon Wiesenthal expressed a similar sentiment when he said that the diary had raised more widespread awareness of the Holocaust than had been achieved during the Nuremberg Trials, because "people identified with this child. This was the impact of the Holocaust, this was a family like my family, like your family and so you could understand this".
Since the original publication of the diary, several sections of Anne's diaries that were initially edited out have been revealed and included in new editions. These contain passages relating to her sexuality, exploration of her genitalia, and thoughts on menstruation. Following the conclusion of an ownership dispute in 2001, new editions have also incorporated pages removed by Otto Frank prior to publication that contain critical remarks about her parents' strained marriage and discuss her difficult relationship with her mother. Two additional pages that Anne had pasted over with brown paper were deciphered in 2018, and contained an attempt to explain sex education and a handful of "dirty" jokes.
In 1963, Otto Frank and his second wife, Elfriede Geiringer-Markovits, set up the Anne Frank Fonds (Foundation) as a charitable foundation, based in Basel, Switzerland. Upon his death, Otto willed the diary's copyright to the Fonds, on the provision that the first 80,000 Swiss francs in income to it each year was to be distributed to his heirs. The Anne Frank Fonds represents the Frank family and administers the rights, inter alia, to the writings of Anne and Otto Frank and the letters of the Frank family. It is the owner of the rights to translations, editions, compilations and authorised books about Anne Frank and her family. The Fonds educates young people against racism, and loaned some of Anne's papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington for an exhibition in 2003. Its annual report that year outlined its efforts to contribute on a global level, with support for projects in Germany, Israel, India, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In June 2007, "Buddy" Elias donated some 25,000 family documents to the Anne Frank House. Among the artefacts are Frank's family photographs taken in Germany and the Netherlands and the letter Otto Frank sent his mother in 1945, informing her that his wife and daughters had perished in Nazi concentration camps.
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Net Worth and Salary
- Estimated Net Worth: $1.5 million (value attributed to her estate, publications, and legacy).
- Salary: Not applicable, as Anne Frank did not earn an income during her lifetime. The net worth estimate is based on posthumous royalties, book sales, and global legacy.
Note: The “Anne Frank House” (museum and nonprofit organization) has a separate financial profile, with recent annual revenue reported at about $423,000 and total assets in 2023 of $857,000. YouTube earnings for the Anne Frank House channel are estimated but do not directly relate to Anne Frank’s personal estate.
Career, Business and Investments
- Career: Diarist, writer
- Business/Investments: None during her lifetime.
- Legacy: Anne’s diary has been translated into over 70 languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her writings have become the foundation for educational programs, museums (such as the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam), and ongoing global remembrance efforts.
- Posthumous Impact: The Anne Frank House and affiliated organizations manage her legacy, promote Holocaust education, and oversee the publication of her diary. These organizations do not generate profits in the traditional sense but rely on donations and ticket sales for sustainability.
Annelies Marie Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – c. February or March 1945) was a German-born Jewish girl who won worldwide fame posthumously for keeping a diary documenting her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands. In the diary, she regularly described her family's everyday life in their hiding place in an Amsterdam attic from 1942 until their arrest in 1944.
In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws. Mandatory registration and segregation soon followed. Otto Frank tried to arrange for the family to emigrate to the United States—the only destination that seemed to him to be viable —but his visa application was never processed because the US consulate in Rotterdam was destroyed by German bombing on 14 May 1940, resulting in the loss of all the paperwork there.
In 2016, the Anne Frank House published new research pointing to an investigation over ration-card fraud rather than betrayal as a possible explanation for the raid that led to the Franks' arrest. The report also stated that other activities in the building may have led authorities there, including activities of Otto Frank's company; however, it did not rule out betrayal.
In August 2022, Dutch researcher Natasha Gerson published an 80-page report analyzing the annotations and sources in The Betrayal of Anne Frank, arguing that the theory in the book was not only flawed but also the product of source fraud. The report concluded that Otto Frank's recorded agenda, as well as a letter he received from helper Johannes Kleiman and several other statements, were proven to be distorted to suit the outcome in the book. Several negative claims about Van den Bergh had Anton Schepers, a Nazi collaborator who was twice diagnosed as insane and who had taken over Van den Bergh's notary practice, as their only source. Included among them was the claim of Nazi contacts and a commission of 200,000 guilders paid on the sale of Jacques Goudstikker's art business. Although The Betrayal of Anne Frank stated that Van den Bergh enjoyed the protection of two high-up Nazis, the report said that the cold-case team and the book's author had omitted statements that the named Nazis had not known him. Previously postponed plans to publish a German translation of Sullivan's book were cancelled soon afterward.
Anne's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts. She wrote several times that she would never allow anyone to read it. She candidly described her life, her family and companions and their situation, while beginning to recognise her ambition to write fiction for publication. In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by Gerrit Bolkestein—a member of the Dutch government in exile, based in London—who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people's oppression under German occupation. On hearing Bolkestein's mention of the publication of letters and diaries, Anne decided to submit her work when the time came.
The Merwedeplein apartment, where the Frank family lived from 1933 until 1942, remained privately owned until the 2000s. After featuring in a television documentary, the building—in a serious state of disrepair—was purchased by a Dutch housing corporation. Aided by photographs taken by the Frank family and descriptions in letters written by Anne, it was restored to its 1930s appearance. Teresien da Silva of the Anne Frank House and Frank's cousin, Bernhard "Buddy" Elias, contributed to the restoration project, which opened in 2005. Each year, a writer who is unable to write freely in the writer's own country is selected for a year-long tenancy, during which they reside and write in the apartment. The first writer selected was the Algerian novelist and poet El-Mahdi Acherchour.
Social Network
Anne Frank did not have a presence on social media. However, the organizations dedicated to her legacy, such as the Anne Frank House, maintain active profiles on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, where they share historical information and educational content.
After moving to Amsterdam, Anne and Margot were enrolled in school. Margot went to public school where, despite initial problems with the Dutch language, she became a star pupil. Anne joined the 6th Montessori School in 1934 and soon felt at home there, meeting children of her own age, like Hanneli Goslar, who would later become one of her best friends. Twenty-three years later, the school was posthumously renamed after her as the Anne Frank School in 1957.
After the summer holidays in 1941, Anne learned that she would no longer be allowed to go to the Montessori School, as Jewish children had to attend Jewish schools. From then on, Anne, like her sister Margot, went to the Jewish Lyceum (Amsterdam) (Joods Lyceum), an exclusive Jewish secondary school in Amsterdam that opened in September that same year.
On Monday morning 6 July, the Frank family moved into their hiding place, a three-story space entered from a landing above the Opekta offices on the Prinsengracht, where some of Otto Frank's most trusted employees would be their helpers. The hiding place became known as the Achterhuis in Dutch (translated as Secret Annex in English editions of the diary). The Franks' apartment was left in a state of disarray to create the impression that they had left suddenly, and Otto left a note that hinted they were going to Switzerland.
Anne Frank died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February or March 1945. Although the specific cause is unknown, there is evidence to suggest that she died from a typhus epidemic that spread through the camp, killing 17,000 prisoners. Gena Turgel, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen who knew Anne at the camp, told the British newspaper The Sun: "Her bed was around the corner from me. She was delirious, terrible, burning up." She also mentioned that she had brought Anne water with which to wash. Turgel, who worked in the camp hospital, added that the epidemic took a terrible toll on the inmates: "The people were dying like flies—in the hundreds. Reports used to come in—500 people who died. Three hundred? We said, 'Thank God, only 300.'" Other diseases, including typhoid fever, were rampant.
A play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett based on the diary premiered in New York City on 5 October 1955 and later won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was followed by the film The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), a critical and commercial success. Biographer Melissa Müller later wrote that the dramatisation had "contributed greatly to the romanticizing, sentimentalizing and universalizing of Anne's story". Over the years the popularity of the diary grew, and in many schools, particularly in the United States, it was included as part of the curriculum, introducing Anne to new generations of readers.
In June 1999, Time magazine published a special edition titled "Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century". Anne Frank was selected as one of the "Heroes & Icons", and the writer Roger Rosenblatt described her legacy with the comment: "The passions the book ignites suggest that everyone owns Anne Frank, that she has risen above the Holocaust, Judaism, girlhood and even goodness and become a totemic figure of the modern world—the moral individual mind beset by the machinery of destruction, insisting on the right to live and question and hope for the future of human beings." He noted that although her courage and pragmatism are admired, her ability to analyse herself and the quality of her writing are the key components of her appeal, and that "[t]he reason for her immortality was basically literary. She was an extraordinarily good writer, for any age, and the quality of her work seemed a direct result of a ruthlessly honest disposition".
The only known film footage of Anne Frank herself comes from a silent 20-second film of her next-door neighbour's wedding, in which she is seen leaning out of a second-floor window in an attempt to better view the bride and groom, at the nine-second mark. The couple, who survived the war, gave the film to the Anne Frank House museum, which has posted it to YouTube.
Education
- Education: Anne Frank attended a Montessori school in Amsterdam before going into hiding.
- Notable Achievements: Although her formal education was interrupted by the war, her diary is considered one of the most significant literary works of the 20th century and is included in school curricula worldwide.
The Frank sisters each hoped to return to school as soon as they were able and continued with their studies while in hiding. Margot took an 'Elementary Latin' course by correspondence in Bep Voskuijl's name and received high marks. Most of Anne's time was spent reading and studying, and she regularly wrote and edited (after March 1944) her diary entries. In addition to providing a narrative of events as they occurred, she wrote about her feelings, beliefs, dreams and ambitions, subjects she felt she could not discuss with anyone. As her confidence in her writing grew and she began to mature, she wrote of more abstract subjects such as her belief in God and how she defined human nature.
In 1959, Otto Frank took legal action in Lübeck against Lothar Stielau, a school teacher and former Hitler Youth member who published a school paper that described the diary as a forgery. The complaint was extended to include Heinrich Buddegerg, who wrote a letter in support of Stielau that was published in a Lübeck newspaper. The court examined the diary in 1960 and authenticated the handwriting as matching that in letters known to have been written by Anne Frank. They declared the diary to be genuine. Stielau recanted his earlier statement, and Otto Frank did not pursue the case further.
With Otto Frank's death in 1980, the original diary, including letters and loose sheets, was willed to the Dutch Institute for War Documentation, which commissioned a forensic study of the diary through the Netherlands Ministry of Justice in 1986. They examined the handwriting against known examples and found a match. They also determined that paper, glue, and ink were readily available during the time the diary was said to have been written. They concluded that the diary was authentic, and their findings were published in what has become known as the "Critical Edition" of the diary. In 1990, the Hamburg Regional Court confirmed the diary's authenticity.
Anne Frank is included as one of the topics in the Canon of the Netherlands, which was prepared by a committee headed by Frits van Oostrom and presented to the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Maria van der Hoeven, in 2006. The Canon is a list of fifty topics that aims to provide a chronological summary of Dutch history to be taught in primary schools and the first two years of secondary school in the Netherlands. A revised version, which still includes Anne as one of the topics, was presented to the Dutch government on 3 October 2007 and approved in 2020.
Eleven saplings from the tree were distributed to museums, schools, parks and Holocaust remembrance centres through a project led by the Anne Frank Center USA. The first sapling was planted in April 2013 at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Saplings were also sent to a school in Little Rock, Arkansas, the scene of a desegregation battle; Liberty Park (Manhattan), which honours victims of the September 11 attacks; and other sites in the United States. Another horse-chestnut tree honouring Anne was planted in 2010 at Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, Alabama.
As of 2018, there are over 270 schools named after Anne Frank worldwide. A hundred of them are in Germany, 89 in France, 45 in Italy, 17 in the Netherlands (among them the 6th Montessori School in Amsterdam that Anne herself attended until 1941), four in Brazil, four in the United States (among them the Anne Frank Inspire Academy), two in Bulgaria and one each in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, Spain, Hungary, Israel, Nepal, Uruguay and Sweden. By 2024 there were 18 schools in Mexico named after her. In 2020, the first of a series of Anne Frank Children's Human Rights Memorials was placed adjacent to a high school in Maaleh, Adumim, outside of Jerusalem. In 2021, the second memorial was unveiled in Antigua, Guatemala, and another is in fabrication in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to be opened on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January 2022. In 2023, however, a plan to rename a daycare centre in Tangerhütte, Germany, named for Anne Frank since 1970, was met with international outcry and eventually dropped.
Summary Table
| Attribute | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Annelies Marie Frank |
| Birthday | June 12, 1929 |
| Death Date | March 12, 1945 |
| Height | 5'5" |
| Net Worth (est.) | $1.5 million (legacy/estate) |
| Education | Montessori school (Amsterdam) |
| Relationship Status | Unmarried |
| Social Media Presence | None (personal), Legacy organizations active |
| Notable Work | “The Diary of a Young Girl” |
