DIARIST GERMANY AND THE NETHERLANDSHer voice was preserved out of the millions that were silenced. . . . It has outlasted the shouts of the murderers and has soared above the voices of time.
—ERNST SCHNABEL, BIOGRAPHER
Anne looked around the dimly lit room. She and her family had been hiding from the Nazis for over two years, and they had to be extremely careful. Their hiding place was in a series of rooms over a warehouse. During the day they had to be completely silent, barely moving in their rooms and speaking only in tiny whispers, if at all. Any noise could mean discovery by the workers below. But Anne felt lucky that she had her family and a few friends hiding with her. Many Jews were not so lucky.
Anne tried to make her attic hiding place as nice as possible; she hung postcards and pictures of movie stars on the wall. But it wasn’t really like home at all. The closest Anne could get to the outside world was to listen softly to the radio at night. But Anne had another way of escaping—her diary. In it, she wrote her thoughts, feelings, experiences, and dreams, leaving a treasured record of her life as a Jewish girl during the Holocaust.
Annelies Marie Frank was born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany. When Anne was just three years old, the Nazi Party gained control of her country. Their racist teachings called for the brutal oppression of Jews, and eventually, the Nazis sought to wipe the entire Jewish race off the face of the earth. By early 1934, Anne and her family had moved to Amsterdam, Holland, in an attempt to escape Nazi persecution.
Anne’s father, Otto, started a new business, and things went well for a few years. But in 1940 the Germans took control of Amsterdam, and life for the Franks changed radically. In 1942 Anne’s older sister was ordered to report to the Nazis so they could send her away to a concentration camp. The Franks knew families that had been sent to concentration camps, and none of them had ever been heard from again. The Frank family decided to go into hiding in a few rooms above Otto’s business warehouse. They also hid another family and a friend. This was a risky choice, but they knew it was the only way the family could stay together. Anne was only thirteen years old.
When the Franks first escaped to their hiding place, they had to wear several outfits of clothing at once. Jews couldn’t walk safely through the city streets with suitcases. Anne thought she would suffocate during that terrifying trip.
For the next two years, Anne and the others never dared to leave their hideout. They received food and other supplies from Dutch friends who risked their own lives by helping Jews. Anne often wrote in her beloved diary. She had been given the red-and-white-checkered journal for her thirteenth birthday, and it was one of the few things she was able to take with her into hiding. On September 28, 1942, Anne wrote: “So far you truly have been a great source of comfort to me . . . and now I can hardly wait for those moments when I’m able to write in you. Oh, I’m so glad I brought you along!”22
Anne always dreamed of becoming a writer. She wrote short stories, fables, and essays. Anne’s diary was translated into more than 30 languages and made into a Pulitzer Prize–winning play. In 1955, Anne’s writings were adapted into a Broadway play called THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, and in the 1997 Broadway revival, the title character was played by another girl who rocked the world—Natalie Portman.
In August 1944, just after Anne’s fifteenth birthday, an informant told the German police about the Franks’ hiding place. Their hideout was raided, and everyone was arrested and sent to concentration camps. Of the eight people who hid above the warehouse, only Anne’s father survived the horrifying ordeal. Anne died of typhoid in the Bergen-Belson concentration camp shortly before her sixteenth birthday.
When Anne’s father returned to Amsterdam after the war, their brave Dutch friends gave him his daughter’s diary. The Nazis had trashed the hideout during the raid, but the friends had managed to save Anne’s book of memories. Otto Frank published his daughter’s diary in 1947.
Today Anne’s diary survives as the voice of an ordinary girl facing a horrible tragedy. Her words are proof of our capacity for courage and hope, even in the worst of times. On May 3, 1944, Anne wrote:
I’ve made up my mind to lead a different life from other girls . . . What I’m experiencing here is a good beginning to an interesting life, and that’s the reason—the only reason—why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.23
The Nazis never crushed the spirit of this extraordinary girl. In one of her last diary entries, Anne writes, “I still believe in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”
HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?
My dream is to become a writer. I want people to see things through my eyes . . . the eyes of a teen girl. I’m absolutely not going to write about the latest teen fashions or secret crushes. I’m not into that—I want to make a difference in people’s lives.
LAURA DIVEGLIA 
AGE 13