Anne Frank Day

Every year on June 12 we observe Anne Frank Day to honor Anne Frank and all the people including children who passed away during the Holocaust between 1933 to 1945. Anne Frank Day has been observed since 2022. 

Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929, to a Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany.  Her parents were Otto Frank and Edith Frank. Anne also had a sister named Margot Frank. A year after Adolf Hitler’s gain of power over Germany in 1933, the Frank family moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands and started discriminating against the Jews. 

By 1942, the Jews started to be captured and sent  to concentration camps. To avoid being caught and deported, the Frank family decided to go into hiding. Their hiding place was called the Achterhuis, which meant “Secret Annex”. It was a three-storey building, which was connected to the office Anne’s father, Otto Frank worked in. The entrance of the hiding place was hidden by a bookcase. Only four of Otto’s most trusted employees knew of their hiding place and would help them. Two other families accompanied the Franks in their hiding. 

Just before going into hiding, Anne Frank had received an autograph book for her 13th birthday, which she decided to use as her journaling diary. During their hiding, from 1942 to 1944, she maintained several diaries where she wrote about her everyday life, her relationships with others in hiding and about her thoughts and feelings. The three families were caught in 1944 by the German uniformed police and each of them was sent to a concentration camp. The only survivor was Otto Frank who decided to publish Anne Frank’s diaries to honor her dream of becoming an author. Today, millions of people across the world have read The Diary of a Young Girl which is a compilation of Anne Frank’s diaries.