Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

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Diaries of Anne Frank
Inscribed 2009
What is it
The diaries of Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who hid in an
Amsterdam annexe during the German occupation of
the Netherlands in the Second World War. The diaries
date from 14 June 1942 to 1 August 1944, and there are
associated writings, quotes and stories.
Why was it inscribed
Anne Frank’s writings are those of one individual but
her voice has come to represent a silent multitude who
could not speak for itself: the millions of Jews who
suffered and died during the Second World War. Anne
wrote in extraordinary, oppressive circumstances in an
Amsterdam annexe, while retaining her optimism and
the voice of a normal adolescent girl.
Where is it
Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt in 1929, a German Jew
and the second of two daughters of a middle-class family.
Anne was three years old when Hitler’s National Socialist
German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, came to power in
1933. Her parents, Otto and Edith, recognized the threat
posed by the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies and moved the
same year with the children to the Netherlands where
Anne’s father set up business.
478 Diaries of Anne Frank
The Netherlands had maintained an open-door policy
to refugees from neighbouring German-controlled
countries, and it is estimated that over 100,000 Jews were
living in the country by the time of the German invasion
in May 1940.
Anti-Jewish legislation began within months and
intensified over the next two years with restrictions on
jobs, education, finances and freedom of movement and
association. By May 1942, every Jew of six years old and over
was ordered to wear a yellow Star of David with the word
‘Jew’ inscribed on it.
In June, a plan was put into effect to deport the
Jews of the Netherlands to ‘work camps’ in Germany
and Poland. Children, the elderly and the sick were
gassed on arrival while healthy adults were put to work
in conditions of extreme brutality. The Jews still in
Amsterdam knew nothing of this.
It was the arrival on 5 June 1942 of deportation papers for
Anne’s older sister Margot, that drove the Frank family into
hiding on 6 July, in the upstairs annexe of Otto’s business
premises in 263 Prinsengracht. Four others hid there with
them in a space approximately 100 square metres, unable
to make any noise or go outside. Otto’s closest colleagues
helped support and hide the group for the 25 months.
On 12 June, her thirteenth birthday, Anne received from
her parents the diary covered in red-and-white chequered
cloth that has become an iconic image. Anne used her diary
until December of that year and continued her entries in
two hardcover school exercise books until 1 August 1944.
These books are also part of the collection, together with
an office accounts book filled with quotes she liked, and a
second accounts book with her own short stories. Anne’s
ambition was to be a writer after the war was over, and she
also kept 360 sheets of thin paper to edit and rewrite her
diary entries.
As well as accounts of her daily life, Anne’s diary entries
deal with typical adolescent problems in terms still
recognizable today, played out against a background
of extraordinary circumstances.
The group hiding in the annexe was betrayed to the
authorities. They were arrested in a raid on 4 August 1944
and four days later were sent to Westerbork transit camp in
� Anne Frank’s diary
Anne Frank �