Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt am Main in Germany.  In 1933, the anti-Jewish National Socialist Party led by Hitler comes to power.

 

  Anne and her older sister Margot were raised in Germany in an atmosphere of tolerance.  They had many friends of many faiths and nationalities.  When Anne was four years old they moved to Amsterdam.

 

  All Jews had to register their businesses and, later, surrender them to non-Jews.  Some of their friends and employees agreed to risk their lives to help the Frank family survive.

 

  On July 5, Anne's sister Margot, received a call up notice to be deported to a Nazi "work camp."  Even Through the hiding place was not ready, they realized they had to move right away.  They packed their belongings and they left note all around the house that they have left the country on the evening of July 6.

 

  Anne got a diary for her 13 birthday.  While in hiding her diary became her best friend.  She wrote her feelings in it, and what happened every day.  Otto Frank was impressed with his daughters diary.  Otto typed up the manuscript for various friends and family members to read.

  Otto published the diary so that readers would learn about the effects of Nazi fascism and its process of dehumanization.  Only 1,500 copies of the book were printed, demand was so great that another addition was quickly produced.  
  Within five years there were German, French and English editions.  Since then, the diary has been translated into 55 languages, and more than 24 million copies have been sold.
  In 1986, the Dutch Department of War Documentation published The Critical Edition of Anne's Diary.  In 1995 Doubleday published The Definitive Edition, on the fifteenth anniversary of Anne Frank's death.
                                                     Here are some entries from Anne's diary.
  "All college students are being asked to sign an official statement to the effects that they 'sympathize with the Germans and approve of the New Older'' Eighty percent have decided to obey the dicatates of their conscience, but the penalty will be sever.  Any student refusing to sign will be sent to a German labor camp."
Lainey Fiedler

7th Grade Social Studies

Spring 2001

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