Background
Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 12, 1929, to parents Otto and Edith Frank. Anne had one older sister named Margot Frank. At the time of Anne's birth, Frankfurt still had a large and thriving Jewish population that co-existed with Christian neighbors. Although the Frank family enjoyed social and economic success throughout most of the 1920s, by the end of the decade, things began to look bleak economically and politically.
Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime came to power in 1933, and the Nazi party urged immediate boycotts of Jewish businesses. New laws forced Jews out of government work and public schools. Otto Frank, along with many other Jews, chose to flee Germany with his family. They settled in the Netherlands. Otto founded a company called Opekta, and both Anne and her sister developed a circle of friends. For a while, the Franks lived with some semblance of normalcy.
Image: Anne Frank as an infant, 1929. Courtesy of Getty Images.
Scribner's Magazine, 1933
The legal persecution of people on grounds which they cannot possibly avoid or change strikes us as peculiarly outrageous because it is literally senseless .
--Dorothy Thompson and Benjamin Stolberg, "Hitler and the American Jew"
This 1933 issue of Scribner's Magazine held by the Bentley Rare Book Museum contains a foretelling article titled "Hitler Splits the American Jews." The article decries Hitler's increasingly troubling attacks on German Jews and discusses the responses of Jewish people in the United States.
Background Image: Scribner's Magazine, 1933. Courtesy of the Bentley Rare Book Museum.
Think about it. . .
While many people around the world were horrified when Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in Germany in 1933, most could not have imagined the atrocities that would ensue over the next twelve years. Based on what you know of yourself, how would you have processed Hitler's victory in 1933?
Anne's Memory Penned
In 1940, the Netherlands fell into the hands of the Germans and the Nazi Party. By the time Anne received a diary as a birthday gift in June 1942, the Nazis had outlined their plan to murder all European Jews. In July 1942, Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in the back of the Opekta office and warehouse located at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. Anne called this space Het Achterhuis or "The Secret Annex." Other residents of the annex included Hermann Van Pels, Auguste Van Pels, Peter Van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer.
Anne wrote the first full entry in her diary on June 14, 1942. Over the next two years, she used the diary to express her private thoughts, feelings, and opinions while in hiding. Most of her entries were crafted in the form of letters to Kitty - an imaginary correspondent. When Anne considered the diary full, she continued to write in small notebooks and loose papers given to her by Margot or by helpers who supplied residents of the Annex with food and goods.
Image: Diagram of the Secret Annex featured in the first American edition of The Diary of Anne Frank, 1952. Courtesy of the Bentley Rare Book Museum.
Think about it. . .
Imagine your former thirteen-year-old self. Did you keep a diary? If so, what did you write about? If not, what kinds of things would you have chosen to write about? How might a tragedy (like war or a pandemic) have influenced these topics?
“Unless you write yourself, you can’t know how wonderful it is; I always used to bemoan the fact that I couldn’t draw, but now I’m overjoyed that at least I can write. 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.”
--Anne Frank
In March 1944, a radio announcement by exiled Dutch education and culture minister, Gerrit Bolkestein, urged Dutch citizens to write about their experiences during war. Anne, who dreamed of becoming a writer, took this to heart and began revising portions of her diary into a book for public eyes. She removed some personal content and rewrote sections as her writing matured.
On August 4, 1944, residents of the Annex were discovered by the Gestapo and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp located in southern Poland. Anne and Margot were later transported to Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany, where they both contracted typhus and died in 1945. The final entry from Anne's diary is dated August 1, 1944.
Background image: Pastedown with reproduction of Anne's original diary entries featured in The Diary of Anne Frank: The Definitive Edition, 1991. Courtesy of the Bentley Rare Book Museum.
Anne's Memory Revised and Published
Otto was the only member of the Frank family who survived the Holocaust. After he was liberated from Auschwitz in 1945, he returned to the Netherlands. He knew that his wife had perished but held out hope for his daughters. He soon learned the devastating news that both Margot and Anne were dead. Miep Gies, one of the individuals who helped hide the Frank family, revealed to Otto that she had kept Anne's diary and the 327 loose papers of her writing. At first, Otto could not bring himself to read Anne's work. Once he began reading, however, he could not put it down.
Otto transcribed the diary and combined and re-ordered sections for clarity and cohesion, simultaneously omitting sections he felt were too critical of others or that spoke of Anne's burgeoning sexuality. He also created pseudonyms for many residents of the annex.
Finding an interested publisher was difficult at first. With the help of friends, Jan and Annie Romein, Otto was able to secure a publishing deal with Contact Publishers in Amsterdam. Het Achterhuis was published in Dutch in 1947.
Image: Het Achterhuis, twenty-ninth edition, November 1959. Courtesy of the Bentley Rare Book Museum.
Think about it. . .
When a writer's work is published posthumously, surviving family members often play pivotal roles in the editorial and publication processes. How might involvement of family members impact how the work is constructed? In the case of The Diary of Anne Frank, do you agree with Otto Frank's decision to omit various sections? Why or why not? Consider the time period during which the diary was first published.
This is a remarkable book. Written by a young girl - and the young are not afraid of telling the truth. . ."
--Eleanor Roosevelt in her introduction to Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
In 1952, the publication of the first American edition of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl which included an introduction by former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt propelled the book to fame. Since then, the Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into over 70 different languages, and over 30 million copies have been sold.
Background image: Cover of the first American edition of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, 1952. Courtesy of the Bentley Rare Book Museum.
Anne's Memory Investigated
Since the publication of Anne's diary, Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites have attempted to refute its authenticity, some even denying Anne's existence at all. To help protect Anne's legacy and memory, Otto Frank founded the Anne Frank Fonds in 1963 in Basel, Switzerland.
When Otto Frank died in 1980, he willed his estate and copyright ownership to the foundation, and stewardship of Anne's diary and papers went to the Dutch state, specifically the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies. The Dutch government undertook a complete analysis and study of Anne's diary, investigating all inks, glues, papers, and handwriting. The government confirmed that Anne's diary was authentic.
The publication The Critical Edition in 1989 included previously omitted sections of Anne's diary, results of the exhaustive study, and an explanation of three distinct versions of the diary with content all written by Anne:
- Version A: Anne's first, unedited diary
- Version B: Anne's self-edited diary
- Version C: Otto Frank's edited version compiled from sections of versions A and B
In 1998, five pages that Otto Frank left out were discovered, and in 2018, two pages of Anne's writing that had been glued and covered with paper were also uncovered using digital technology.
Image: Title page to The Diary of A Young Girl: the Definitive Edition, 1991. Courtesy of the Bentley Rare Book Museum.
Anne's Memory Compared
Read passages from October 7, 1942 - October 9, 1942 featured in three versions of The Diary of Anne Frank and answer the questions that follow.
First American Edition (translation of version C)
The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition (includes versions A and B)
Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation (adapted from versions A and B)
Think about it. . .
- What surprised you most about the differences between the content in the first American edition and the definitive edition?
- Why do you think there is such a disparity in length between the first American edition and the definitive edition? Why would Otto have chosen to omit the entire October 7th entry?
- How does Anne describe the confrontation with her mother in the first American edition versus the definitive edition?
- Graphic adaptations sacrifice text to tell stories primarily through sequential art. How did the artists succeed (or not) in this task in the above passage?
- Which content stayed consistently the same across the three editions? Why do you think this is the case?
Anne's Memory Reinterpreted
The Diary of Anne Frank is authentic and true. It is also a great example of how memory is recorded, revised, and reinterpreted by others. The Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into many languages and adapted into plays, movies, and graphic books, all with the intention of reaching new audiences. The Bentley Rare Book Museum owns copies of The Diary of Anne Frank in twelve different languages, including copies of the graphic adaptation in English, French, Spanish, and Russian.
See an example of The Diary of Anne Frank adapted into an animated feature film available for free on YouTube:
Background Image: Various editions of The Diary of Anne Frank. Courtesy of the Bentley Rare Book Museum.
