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Behind the Aegis

(53,959 posts)
Wed Jun 12, 2019, 12:54 PM Jun 2019

Today, she would have been 90; Anne Frank.

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (German: [anəˈliːs maˈʁiː ˈfʁaŋk], Dutch: [ɑnəˈlis maːˈri ˈfrɑŋk]); 12 June 1929 – February or March 1945)[3] was a German-born Dutch-Jewish diarist. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl (originally Het Achterhuis in Dutch; English: The Secret Annex), in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world's best known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, Netherlands, having moved there with her family at the age of four and a half when the Nazis gained control over Germany. Born a German national, she lost her citizenship in 1941 and thus became stateless. By May 1940, the Franks were trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the Franks went into hiding in some concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father, Otto Frank, worked. From then until the family's arrest by the Gestapo in August 1944, she kept a diary she had received as a birthday present, and wrote in it regularly. Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to concentration camps. In October or November 1944, Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died (probably of typhus) a few months later. They were originally estimated by the Red Cross to have died in March, with Dutch authorities setting 31 March as their official date of death, but research by the Anne Frank House in 2015 suggests it is more likely that they died in February.[3]

Otto, the only survivor of the Franks, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved by his secretary, Miep Gies, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, and has since been translated into over 60 languages.

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Today, she would have been 90; Anne Frank. (Original Post) Behind the Aegis Jun 2019 OP
We owed her memory a better world than we have today... hlthe2b Jun 2019 #1
i visited the house she hid in, in Amersterdam... samnsara Jun 2019 #2
I did, too. kskiska Jun 2019 #6
I saw an interview earlier this week (I think it was an old one) of one of BigDemVoter Jun 2019 #3
K&R ismnotwasm Jun 2019 #4
And as scary as marching Nazis (protected by the poice in Detori at a LGBT march), is... Behind the Aegis Jun 2019 #10
I read "The Diary Of A Young Girl" when I was about twelve, right around the time Aristus Jun 2019 #5
Anne Frank is a heroine ChubbyStar Jun 2019 #7
. struggle4progress Jun 2019 #8
Broken lives and hearts. Loge23 Jun 2019 #9

BigDemVoter

(4,150 posts)
3. I saw an interview earlier this week (I think it was an old one) of one of
Wed Jun 12, 2019, 01:04 PM
Jun 2019

Anne Frank's friends, Hanneli Pick-Gosler, who saw Anne in a concentration camp. She said that Anne would have a much different perspective after Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen than, "Man (humans) are essentially good at heart" or however the quote goes. . . .

Behind the Aegis

(53,959 posts)
10. And as scary as marching Nazis (protected by the poice in Detori at a LGBT march), is...
Wed Jun 12, 2019, 09:03 PM
Jun 2019

...the fact we have a president who refers to some them as "good people" makes it even more frightening.

Aristus

(66,380 posts)
5. I read "The Diary Of A Young Girl" when I was about twelve, right around the time
Wed Jun 12, 2019, 01:06 PM
Jun 2019

my mother appeared as Mrs. Frank in a local production of the play.

It plunged me into a depression that lasted the better part of two years. A lot of it may just have been the onset of adolescence, but learning of her history just made everything worse.

ChubbyStar

(3,191 posts)
7. Anne Frank is a heroine
Wed Jun 12, 2019, 01:10 PM
Jun 2019

A beautiful beacon of truth. Some people have top 10 lists of favorite albums, I have a top 10 list of hero's/heroines. She is among them.

Loge23

(3,922 posts)
9. Broken lives and hearts.
Wed Jun 12, 2019, 02:26 PM
Jun 2019

I learned about Anne Frank at a very young age through the 1959 movie and it left an indelible mark on my heart that still grieves.
I recently finished a remarkable account of D-Day by Jonathan Mayo (highly recommend) and in it Mr. Mayo includes Anne Frank monitoring the events of that day via a radio in the Frank's hideout in Amsterdam.
Anne and her sister Margot are excited about the invasion and hopeful that their ordeal will soon be over. Margot, aloud, says that perhaps she will be able to go back to school in September or October.
Barely two months later, the monsters show up and we all know the rest.
Anne's mother, Edith (same name as my mom) will be murdered in Auschwitz. Margot and Anne, after untold atrocities, will die at Bergen-Belson, also murdered by the very monsters that we now see roaming the world again.
Miraculously Otto, Anne's father, survives to tell the story.
The brave soldiers from the UK, Canada, the USA, and France weren't aware of the atrocities that lay ahead as they battled against the formidable defenses along the Atlantic "wall". When General George Patton first came upon the Ohrdruf concentration camp - the forst to be liberated - he became physically ill and ordered his men, as many as possible, to see what he saw.
Millions, as we know now, were murdered by these sub-humans. Somehow, Anne Franks still lives on and we all owe it to her to never forget.

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