Anne Frank was a Jewish during Adolf Hitler's reign of power.  Anne's was only one of the millions of children that died in the Holocaust.  This is her story.  This story will talk about Anne's Background and when she was living in the Secret Annex.  Also, how she was captured, who betrayed her and her family.  Anne's diary tells about how she felt during the Holocaust until she was captured.
Anne Frank was born June 12,1929 in Frankfurt Am Main, Germany.  She was the second daughter of Otto Frank and Edith Frank.  She was a Jew.  Her only sibling was three years older. Her name was Margot.  The Frank family left Germany and went to the Netherlands in the summer of 1933.  Otto Had a Company in Amsterdam.  It sold Opekta, a product to help housewives make homemade jam and sold spices.  Anne and Margot stayed with their Grandmother Hollander in Germany while their mother tried to find a home in Amsterdam.  Times Began to change.  A quote from the diary of Anne Frank explains these times.  ''After May 1940, the good times were few and far between; first there was the war, then the capitulation and then the arrival of  the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews.''
On May 10,1940 German armies invaded the Netherlands.  On May 15, 1940 the occupation of the Netherlands started.  That is also when they started the discrimination on the Jews.  June 12,1942, Anne received the diary as a present.  There were rumors that the Jews must go to Germany.
Margot Frank received a call up on July 5,1942.  Germany's plan was to make them work in camps.  Anne's family would be arrested if Margot did not report.  They would not let Margot go alone so they went into hiding.
They made a hide out for the Franks and another Jewish family they knew.  They left for the hide out.  Anne Frank was quoted saying ''My happy-go-lucky, carefree school days are gone forever.''  The school Anne and Margot went to before going into hiding was The Montessori school.  It was close to the house they lived in on Merwedeplein, south of the city.  During the summer of 1942, Anne and Margot went to a school named The Jewish Lyceum.  This was a school for Jewish kids that were banned from their regular schools.
The day after they received the call up, families left for the hide out.  That day Anne's father told her to put on as many clothes as she could so it would not look too suspicious carrying suit cases.
The secret hiding space was called the Secret Annex.  The hiding place was inside a spice factory.  One owned by Otto Frank.  It was on 263 Prinsearucht.  The factory was in the front of the building and the Secret Annex was in the back.  The Secret Annex was concealed behind a moveable bookcase.  Anne Frank wrote of it in her diary saying,''Now our Secret Annex has truly become secret...Mr. Kulger thought it would be better to have a bookcase built in front of the entrance to our hiding place.  It swings out on its hinges and opens like a door.'' 
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The Franks moved into this annex with one other family, the Van Pels family.  They had a son named Peter who was about Margot's age.  Otto's four employees, Miep Gies,  Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, and Bep Voskuijl helped them by giving them food, clothing, books, radio's, and other things.  Their radio was their eye's and ears on what was happing in the world.  The radio reports were bad for the Jews.
Someone walked into the Factory one night and tried to get into a safe they had in the office of the building.  Peter's cat made a noise and the burglar ran away.  This was the night before they added a new person to the Annex.  In November 1942, Fritz Pfeffer joined the Annex.  He was a dentist.  He knew both families in the annex.
Everyone in the Annex had to stay indoors and be quiet when the factory was open.  They didn't want employees to hear them.  They had to take off their shoes and couldn't move around.  After all the employees left for the day, they could move around and even use the bathroom.  Anne wrote ''The nicest part is being able to write down all my thoughts and feelings, other wise.  I'd absolutely suffocate.''
Anne and Peter did not get along with each other at first.  Neither did her and Mr. Fritz.  Who later became her roommate.  He took Margot's bed, so she slept in her parent's room on the floor.
The dentist told them that some of the Frank's and Van Pels friends and family were taken to camps. Anne's best friend was taken as well.  Even with the awful news Anne new that her Stars were still there.  On July 11, 1942, she was quoted saying, ''Up till now our bedroom, with its blank walls, was very bare. Thanks to Father who brought my entire postcard and film-star collection here before hand, and a brush and pot of glue, I was able to plaster the walls with pictures.  It looks much more cheerful.'' 
On Hanukkah, Anne gave all of the people in the Secret Annex homemade gifts.  They were given to cheer everyone up.  That night someone broke in again to try to get into the safe.  Later that night, two policemen and a man went into the factory to see if anyone was in side.  They saw that all the windows were broken and the office was torn up but they didn'I now write regularly. This way of keeping a diary is much nicer, and now I can hardly wait for those moments when I am able write in you. Oh, I am so glad I brought you along.”
In her diary, Anne said that she had many friends but she did not really call them friends. She wrote that many of the boys in her school liked her. She could only tell things to her diary. She didn’t think that anyone would understand her. The only person that she felt understood her was her dad.
Once in hiding, Anne wrote more about what was happening and how she was feeling. On December 24, 1943, Anne wrote, “Cycling again, dancing, flirting and what-have-you, how I would love that, if only I were free again! Sometimes I even think, will anybody understand me, will anybody overlook my ingratitude, overlook Jew or non-Jew, and just see the young girl in me who is badly in need of some rollicking fun?”
As Anne listened to the radio, she wrote down things as they happened. Such as, “Turkey’s entered the war. Great excitement. Anxiously awaiting radio reports.”
Anne also knew that she was a good writer. She explained this by saying, “I know that I can write, a couple of my stories are good, my descriptions of the ‘Secret Annex’ are humorous, there’s a lot in my diary that speaks, but-whether I have real talent remains to be seen.” She wrote this on April 5, 1944. Anne also wrote many short stories, fairy tales, and essays and beginnings of a novel, five notebooks and more than 300 loose pages.
Anne and her family hid for 25 months in a factory in central Amsterdam. On the day they were found, four German and Dutch security police went to the warehouse and asked the employee, William Van Maaren, where the Jews were hiding. Van Maaren showed them but it seemed like they already knew.
They had three people, they thought might be the one that betrayed Anne’s family. One was a factory worker, one a cleaner and another a friend of the Franks, They are still not sure but all three suspects are dead.
For many years, people have suspected Van Maaren as the betrayer. Before he died, he still said that he did not betray the Franks. Now -a-days people believe that it was Dutch Nazi, Tonny Ahlers. No one knows for sure who betrayed them. It’s a mystery. It could have been anyone for that matter. The annex was and still is visible from the outside. Anyone could have noticed them.
If you think what happened to Anne Frank was bad, this is only one of the millions of stories of the Jewish Holocaust. Anne’s story became popular because it was one of the only stories that tell how Jews felt during the Holocaust. Younger people relate well to Anne because her diaries are like reading a friend’s notes. Anne was disliked because she was a Jew during the Holocaust. If you read her diary, you will know that she was just like anyone else. 
 
Katie Deiter

7th Holocaust Project

Rossville Jr. High, April 2005

Bibliography