Anne Frank

Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929. When she was four, her family moved to Amsterdam to escape the rising persecution of Jews in Germany. Anne grew up a lively, talkative girl who loved reading and writing. For her thirteenth birthday in June 1942 she received a red-checkered diary, which she named Kitty and began to fill with her thoughts.

A few weeks later, in July 1942, the Frank family went into hiding in a concealed annex behind her father's business premises on the Prinsengracht canal. For more than two years Anne recorded daily life in the Secret Annex, her hopes, fears, and reflections on human nature, writing with a maturity and honesty far beyond her years. In August 1944 the hiding place was discovered and its occupants were arrested.

Anne and her sister Margot died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early 1945, shortly before its liberation. Her father Otto, the family's only survivor, published her diary in 1947. Translated into more than 70 languages, The Diary of a Young Girl has given a human voice to the victims of the Holocaust, and Anne's words continue to speak for hope amid darkness.