Anne Frank: Betrayed, deported, world-famous

In 1933, Anne Frank and her family fled from Germany to the Netherlands to escape the Nazis. In the Second World War, she had to go into hiding under the German occupation. For two years, she lived concealed in the secret annex of a house in Amsterdam. But someone betrayed her: On August 4, 1944, her family was found, arrested and deported to Auschwitz.

Anne Frank (front left) had a sister Margot (back right) who was three-and-a-half years older than she was. Her father, Otto Frank, took this photo on Margot's eighth birthday in February 1934, when the family was already in exile in the Netherlands.

Anne's father was able to found a company in Amsterdam. It had its headquarters in this building (c.). Otto organized the "secret annex" above and behind the premises. The family of four lived there from 1942 to 1944, together with four other people on the run from the Nazis. It was here that Anne Frank wrote her world-famous diary. The Anne Frank House has been a museum since 1960.

From the start, Anne wrote in her diary almost every day. It became a kind of friend to her, and she called it Kitty. The life she led was completely different from her previous, carefree existence. "What I like the most is that I can at least write down what I think and feel, otherwise I would completely suffocate," she penned.

Anne Frank and her sister were taken from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen on October 30, 1944. More than 70,000 people died in this concentration camp. After the liberation of the camp, the victims were transported to mass graves under the supervision of British soldiers. Anne and Margot Frank were among those who died there from typhus, at an unknown date in March 1945. Anne was just 15 years old.

Anne's tombstone also stands in Bergen-Belsen. This Jewish girl from Frankfurt had imagined her life differently. "I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to bring joy and aid to the people who live around me, but who don't know me all the same. I want to live on, even after my death," she wrote in her diary on April 5, 1944.

Her great dream was to become a journalist or author. Thanks to her father, her diary was published on July 25, 1947. An English version was brought out in 1952. Anne Frank became a symbol for the victims of the Nazi dictatorship. "We all live with the aim of attaining happiness; we all live differently, but the same." — Anne Frank, July 6, 1944.