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There’s in people simply an urge to destroy, an urge to kill, to murder and rage, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated, and grown will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.

... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again.
(Venus in Taurus conjunct Chiron.  Jupiter (widely) conjunct North Node in 11^th house.)

... we often ask ourselves here despairingly: “What, oh, what is the use of the war? Why can’t people live peacefully together? Why all this destruction? ”The question is very understandable, but no one has found a satisfactory answer to it so far. Yes, why do they make still more gigantic planes, still heavier bombs and, at the same time, prefabricated houses for reconstruction? Why should millions be spent daily on the war and yet there’s not a penny available for medical services, artists, or for poor people?... Oh, why are people so crazy?
(Moon conjunct Neptune in 2^nd house.)

If God lets me live, I shall attain more than Mummy ever has done, I shall not remain insignificant, I shall work in the world and for mankind!
(Saturn in Sagittarius in 6^th house, opposition Sun)

I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. But, and that is the great question, will I ever be able to write anything great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? I hope so, oh, Ihope so very much, for I can recapture everything when I write, my thoughts, my ideals and my fantasies.
(Gemini Sun conjunct Mercury in 11^th house, opposition Saturn.)

Who has inflicted this upon us? Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now? It is God thathas made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us upagain. If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left,when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held upas an example.

You must work and do good, not be lazy and gamble, if you wish to earn happiness. Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.... I can’t understand people who don’t like work ...
(Saturn in6^th house.)

I must work, so as not to be a fool, to get on, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want!... I can’t imagine that I would have to lead the same sort of life as Mummy ... and all the women who do their work and are then forgotten. I must have something besides a husband and children, something that I can devote myself to!
(Moon conjunct Neptune in 2^nd house.  Uranus on MC.)

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if ... there weren’t any other people living in the world.

Bolkenstein, a Minister, was speaking on the Dutch programme from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the “Secret Annexe.” The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.
(Pluto in 12^th house.  Gemini Sun conjunct Mercury.)

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.
(Uranus conjunct Chiron.)

They mustn’t know my despair, I can’t let them see the wounds which they have caused, I couldn’t bear their sympathy and their kind-hearted jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more. If I talk, everyone thinks I’m showing off; when I’m silent they think I’m ridiculous; rude if I answer, sly if I get a good idea, lazy if I’m tired, selfish if I eat a mouthful more than I should, stupid, cowardly, crafty, etc. etc.
(Gemini Sun opposition Saturn.)

I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a different life from other girls and, later on, different from ordinary housewives. My start has been so very full of interest, and that is the sole reason why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.
(Moon conjunct Neptune in Leo.  Uranus on MC.)

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
(Uranus in Aries on MC.  Mars in Leo.)

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same."

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know howgreat you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! Andwhat your potential is!
(Jupiter in 11^th house conjunct North Node.)

No one has ever become poor by giving.... I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains. I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall beable to carry them out.
 (Neptunein 2^nd house.) 

Who would ever think that so much went on in the soul of a young girl?  Whoever is happy will make others happy too. If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

.Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (June 12, 1929 – March 1945) was a German Jewish girl who wrote a diary while in hiding with her family and four friends in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II.

Her family had moved to the Netherlands after the Nazis gained power in their home country Germany. The Netherlands was occupied by Nazi forces in May, 1940, and due to the increasing persecution of Jews, the family went into hiding in July, 1942 on the third floor of Otto Frank's office building. After two years in hiding, the group was betrayed, along with the Van Pels family and a dentist, Fritz Pfeiffer, who had been hiding with them. They were transported to concentration camps where Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen within days of her sister, Margot, in March, 1945. At the end of the war her father, Otto, who survived, returned to Amsterdam to find that Anne's diary had been saved by Miep Gies, their beloved friend who had helped provide them food and other necessities while in hiding. Convinced that the diary was a unique record he took action to have it published.

The diary was given to Anne for her thirteenth birthday and chronicles the events of her life from June 12, 1942 until its final entry of August 1, 1944. It was eventually translated from its original Dutch into many languages and became one of the world's most widely read books. There have also been many theatrical productions, and an opera, based on the diary. Described as the work of a mature and insightful mind, it provides an intimate examination of daily life under Nazi occupation; through her writing, Anne Frank has become one of the most renowned and discussed of the Holocaust victims.

Early life
The apartment block on the Merwedeplein where the Frank family lived from 1934 until 1942Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the second daughter of Otto Heinrich Frank (May 12, 1889–August 19, 1980) and Edith Holländer (January 16, 1900–January 6, 1945). Margot Betti Frank (February 16, 1926–March 1945) was her sister.

The family lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and non-Jewish citizens, and the children grew up with Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish friends. The Franks were Reform Jews, observing many of the traditions of Judaism. Edith Frank was the more devout parent, while Otto Frank was interested in scholarly pursuits and had an extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read.

On March 13, 1933, elections were held in Frankfurt for the municipal council, and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won. Anti-Semitic demonstrations occurred almost immediately, and the Franks began to fear what would happen to them if they remained in Germany. Later in the year, Edith and the children went to Aachen, where they stayed with Edith's mother, Rosa Holländer. Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organise the business and to arrange accommodation for his family.

Otto Frank began working at the Opekta Works, a company which sold the fruit extract pectin, and found an apartment on the Merwedeplein (Merwede Square) in an Amsterdam suburb. By February 1934, Edith and the children had arrived in Amsterdam, and the two girls were enrolled in the Montessori school. Margot demonstrated ability in arithmetic, and Anne showed aptitude for reading and writing. They were also recognised as highly distinct personalities, Margot being well mannered, reserved, and studious, while Anne was outspoken, energetic, and extroverted.

In 1938, Otto Frank started a second company in partnership with Hermann van Pels, a butcher, who had fled Osnabrück in Germany with his family. In 1939 Edith's mother came to live with the Franks, and remained with them until her death in January 1942. In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive and discriminatory laws, and the mandatory registration and segregation of Jews soon followed. Margot and Anne were excelling in their studies and had a large number of friends, but with the introduction of a decree that Jewish children could only attend Jewish schools, they were enrolled at the Jewish Lyceum.

The period chronicled in the diary
Before going into hiding
Yellow stars of the type that all Jews were required to wear during the Nazi occupation.For her thirteenth birthday on June 12, 1942, Anne received a small notebook which she had pointed out to her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an autograph book, bound with red-and-green checkered cloth and with a small lock on the front, Anne had already decided she would use it as a diary. She began writing in it almost immediately, and described herself and her family and her daily life at home and at school, prefacing her entries with the salutation "Dear Kitty". She wrote about her school grades, her friends, boys she flirted with and the places she liked to visit in her neighbourhood. While these early entries demonstrate that in many ways her life was that of a typical schoolgirl, she also refers to changes that had taken place since the German occupation. Some references are seemingly casual and not emphasised, however in some entries she provides more detail of the oppression that was steadily increasing. She wrote about the yellow star all Jews were forced to wear in public, and she listed some of the restrictions and persecutions that had encroached into the lives of Amsterdam's Jewish population.

In July 1942, Margot Frank received a call-up notice ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp. Anne was then told of a plan that Otto had formulated with his most trusted employees, and which Edith and Margot had been aware of for a short time. The family was to go into hiding in rooms above and behind the company's premises on the Prinsengracht, a street along one of Amsterdam's canals.

Life in the achterhuis
Otto Frank's offices were in the front of the building, with the achterhuis in the rear.On July 5, 1942, the family moved into the hiding place. Their apartment was left in a state of disarray to create the impression that they had left suddenly, and Otto Frank left a note that hinted they were going to Switzerland. As Jews were not allowed to use public transport they walked several kilometres from their home, with each of them wearing several layers of clothing as they did not dare to be seen carrying luggage. The achterhuis (a Dutch word denoting the rear part of a house) was a three-story space at the rear of the building that was entered from a landing above the Opekta offices. Two small rooms, with an adjoining bathroom and toilet, were on the first level, and above that a large open room, with a small room beside it. From this smaller room, a ladder led to the attic. The door to the achterhuis was later covered by a bookcase to ensure it remained undiscovered. Anne would later refer to it in her diary as the "Secret Annexe". The main building, situated a block from the Westerkerk, was nondescript, old and typical of buildings in the western quarters of Amsterdam.

Victor Kugler, Johannes Kleiman, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were the only employees who knew of the people in hiding, and with Gies' husband Jan Gies and Voskuijl's father Johannes Hendrik Voskuijl, were their "helpers" for the duration of their confinement. They provided the only contact between the outside world and the occupants of the house, and they kept them informed of war news and political developments. They catered for all of their needs, ensured their safety and supplied them with food, a task that grew more difficult with the passage of time. Anne wrote of their dedication and of their efforts to boost morale within the household during the most dangerous of times. All were aware that if caught they could face the death penalty for sheltering Jews.

In late July, they were joined by the van Pels family: Hermann, Auguste, and 16-year-old Peter, and then in November by Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist and friend of the family. Anne wrote of her pleasure at having new people to talk to, but tensions quickly developed within the group forced to live in such confined conditions. After sharing her room with Pfeffer she found him to be insufferable, and she clashed with Auguste van Pels, whom she regarded as foolish. Her relationship with her mother became strained and Anne wrote that they had little in common as her mother was too remote. Although she sometimes argued with Margot, she wrote of an unexpected bond that had developed between them, but she remained closest emotionally to her father. Some time later, after first dismissing the shy and awkward Peter van Pels, she recognised a kinship with him and the two entered a romance.

Anne spent most of her time reading and studying, while continuing to write and edit her diary. In addition to providing a narrative of events as they occurred, she also wrote about her feelings, beliefs and ambitions, subjects she felt she could not discuss with anyone. As her confidence in her writing grew, and as she began to mature, she wrote of more abstract subjects such as her belief in God, and how she defined human nature. She continued writing regularly until her final entry of August 1, 1944.

Arrest and concentration camps
On the morning of August 4, 1944, the achterhuis was stormed by the Grüne Polizei following a tip-off from an informer who was never identified [1]. Led by Schutzstaffel Sergeant Karl Silberbauer of the Sicherheitsdienst, the group included at least three members of the Security Police. The occupants were loaded into trucks and taken for interrogation. Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were taken away and subsequently jailed, but Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were allowed to go. They later returned to the achterhuis, where they found Anne's papers strewn on the floor. They collected them, as well as several family photograph albums, and Gies resolved to return them to Anne after the war.

The members of the household were taken to the camp at Westerbork. Ostensibly a transit camp, by this time more than 100,000 Jews had passed through it, and on September 2, the group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp. They arrived after a three days' journey, and were separated by gender, with the men and women never to see each other again. Of the 1019 passengers, 549 people – including all children under the age of 15 years – were selected and sent directly to the gas chambers where they were killed. Anne had turned 15 three months earlier and was spared, and although everyone from the achterhuis survived this selection, Anne believed her father had been killed.

With the other females not selected for immediate death, Anne was forced to strip naked to be disinfected, had her head shaved and was tattooed with an identifying number on her arm. By day the women were used as slave labour, and by night were crowded into freezing barracks. Disease was rampant and before long Anne's skin became badly infected by scabies.

On October 28, selections began for women to be relocated to Bergen-Belsen. More than 8,000 women, including Anne and Margot Frank and Auguste van Pels, were transported, but Edith Frank was left behind. Tents were erected to accommodate the influx of prisoners, Anne and Margot among them, and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease increased rapidly. Anne was briefly reunited with two friends, Hanneli Goslar (named "Lies" in the diary) and Nanette Blitz, who both survived the war. They said that Anne, naked but for a piece of blanket, explained she was infested with lice and had thrown her clothes away. They described her as bald, emaciated and shivering but although ill herself, she told them that she was more concerned about Margot, whose illness seemed to be more severe. Goslar and Blitz did not see Margot who remained in her bunk, too weak to walk. Anne said they were alone as both of their parents were dead.

In March 1945, a typhus epidemic spread through the camp killing an estimated 17,000 prisoners. Witnesses later testified that Margot fell from her bunk in her weakened state and was killed by the shock, and that a few days later Anne also died. They estimated that this occurred a few weeks before the camp was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945, and although the exact dates were not recorded, it is generally accepted to have been between the end of February and the middle of March.

After the war, it was estimated that of the 110,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation, only 5,000 survived.

The individual fates of the other occupants of the achterhuis, their helpers, and other people associated with Anne Frank, are discussed further. See article: People associated with Anne Frank.

 

Anne Frank received a blank diary on her 13th birthday, just weeks before she and her family went into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. Her marvelously detailed, engagingly personal entries chronicle 25 trying months of claustrophobic, quarrelsome intimacy with her parents, sister, a second family, and a middle-aged dentist who has little tolerance for Anne's vivacity. The diary's universal appeal stems from its riveting blend of the grubby particulars of life during wartime and candid discussion of emotions familiar to every adolescent.

The story of the Frank family began in Germany in the 1920's when Otto and Edith Frank led a happy life, highlighted by the births of their daughters Margot and Anne. She and her older sister Margot, frequently spent their summer in Aachen, Germany, with their grandmother. In 1933, in response to Hitler's anti-Jewish decrees, Otto Frank opened a branch of his company, Opteka, in Amsterdam and began planning to bring his family there.

The Frank family finally moved into a house on Medwedplein in southern Amsterdam in 1933 and Anne began to attend the nearby Montessori school, where she excelled. Anne made many friends and was an exceptional student.

The family's feelings of security collapsed, however, when in 1940, Adolf Hitler and his troops conquered Holland and the freedom of the Jews began to be severely restricted. Dictates on where Jews could shop, swim or go to school became a part of everyday life.

Aware of where those restrictions might ultimately lead, Otto Frank spent the year preparing and stocking an annex behind his business office at Prinsengracht 263 into a hiding place.

On her 13th birthday in 1942 Anne received as a gift from her parents, a diary. She immediately took to writing her intimate thoughts and musings. A few short weeks later, however, Margot received a notice from the Nazi SS to report for work detail at a labor camp. On July 5th, 1942, Anne and the Frank family moved to the "Secret Annex" adjacent to Otto Frank's former office on Prinsengracht.

When the thirteen-year-old and her family went into hiding from the Nazis, who were victimizing and arresting Jews, the diary went with her. She called it “Kitty,” and for the two years she spent in hiding, the diary was her solace, her confidant, her friend. What she recorded there were, in many ways, the ordinary thoughts and feelings of a teenage girl. But she was a teenage girl living under extraordinary circumstances in ominous times.

Eight people eventually came to live in the secret annex. There were the four members of the Frank family, Otto Frank, Edith Frank, Margot and Anne, three from the Van Pels family, Herman and Auguste Van Pels and their son Peter, and an elderly dentist named Pfeffer.

Life in the annex settled down to a monotonous routine. They woke at 06:45a.m. and by 08:30 they all had to be quiet as work began in the warehouse beneath them. Breakfast at 09:00 and after breakfast all movement was kept to an absolute minimum until 12:30 when the warehouse closed for lunch.

At this time, the inhabitants of the annex had lunch and listened to the BBC. At 14:00 the warehouse reponed and there was silence once again. Between 14:00pm and 17:30 time was spent resting or reading. When the warehouse closed at 17:30 everyone could move around again. At 21:00 preperations were made to go to bed. At weekends the routine varied, with no welcomed visitors from downstairs and even more need to keep quiet to avoid attracting the slightest attention to what supposed to be an empty building.

Inevitably, emotions in the closed quarters began running high. The van Pels family tried unsuccessfully to discipline Anne, and, according to Miep Gies, Mrs. Frank became very depressed. Shortly before they were arrested by the Gestapo, Anne experienced the first flush of love with Peter Van Pels, a shy boy also reaching out for love and understanding.

But the pressures of confinement soon crushed their romance - as always, there was the ever-present threat of discovery ...

By the way - Anne used some fictitious names when she wrote in her diary. The van Daans were Hermann, Auguste, and Peter van Pels. Mr. Dussel was Fritz Pfeffer.

In addition, four people acted as helpers for the people in the annex, and brought them food, supplies and news of the world outside the darkened windows. These protectors had placed themselves at great personal risk because they could have been arrested and jailed for helping Jews. All of these people worked at the business that had belonged to Otto Frank.

Anne's famous diary captured two years of hiding in the attic above the store, but it ended on August 4, 1944, when their hiding place was betrayed. It was an anonymous phone call which led the Nazis to the secret annex. For almost 60 years, the identity of that informant, whose call had such tragic consequences, has remained a mystery to historians. One theory alleged the betrayer was Anton Ahlers, a business associate of Otto Frank and a committed Nazi. A book by British author Carol Ann Lee, published 2002 in Dutch and English, claimed Ahlers not only turned in the inhabitants, but may have blackmailed Otto Frank for years after the war, receiving payment for his silence about Frank's business with Nazi Germany at the beginning of the Second World War.

The second theory pointed to a Dutch woman Lena Hartog-van Bladeren, one of the cleaning women working in the office in front of the annex. No evidence against her was uncovered, but a 1998 biography by Melissa Mueller revived the charges, largely based on contradictions she found in Hartog's statements to the police.

As the Gestapo men searched the annex for valuables such as money, the briefcase in which Anne kept her writings was opened and the papers were scattered on the floor. Little did these men realize the eventual value of these materials. However, the two women, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl , had known of Anne's intense feelings about these papers and gathered them up for safe keeping.

Anne's precious diary was among the many personal effects left behind by the family. Anne, and the seven others who shared the cramped Secret Annex with her, were all deported to Westerbork camp.

A few weeks later, as the Allies began retaking Holland, the inhabitants of the camp were moved to Auschwitz and later to other camps. At the gates of Auschwitz, Otto Frank was separated from his family for the last time. In January, 1945, the German guards left the camp to the advancing Russian army. Most of the prisoners, including Peter Van Pels, were herded along with the troops, but Otto Frank was in the camp infirmary and was left behind. Otto Frank tried to convince Peter to hide in the infirmary, but he was afraid. Peter was never heard from again.

Otto Frank, barely alive, was discovered by the Russian army that liberated Auschwitz. Upon recovering, he began to search for his family, as shown in the letters that have only recently been discovered and have never before been seen or heard by the public. En route home to Amsterdam, he learned of his wife's death, but it was not until some time after returning home that he discovered the facts of Margot and Anne's death.

Otto Frank was the only one of the original 8 residents of the secret annex to survive. Van Pels died in the Auschwitz gas chambers and Pfeffer died at the Neuengamme camp in Germany.

Anne ultimately ended up in the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany, after being evacuated from Auschwitz in October, 1944. As starvation. cold and disease swept through the camp's population, Margot, Anne's sister, developed typhus and died. A few days later, Anne herself, in April, 1945, succumbed to the disease a few weeks before the camp was liberated by the British. She was 15 years old ...

A childhood friend of Anne Frank, Hannah Elisabeth Pick-Goslar, ended up in Bergen-Belsen with Anne and Margot. Hannah later recalled:"Anne came to the barbed-wired fence. I couldn't see her. The fence and the straw were between us. There wasn't much light. Maybe I saw her shadow. It wasn't the same Anne. She was a broken girl, I probably was too, but it was so terrible. She immediately began to cry, and she told me, 'I don't have any parents anymore.' I always think, if Anne had known that her father was still alive, she might have had more strength to survive, because she died very shortly before the end, only a few days before (liberation) .."

In Newsweek Magazine, July 21, 1997 another holocaust survivor, Irma Sonnenberg Menkel, tells the story of Anne Frank and her death in Bergen-Belsen "I saw Anne Frank Die":

"One of the children in my barracks toward the end of the war was Anne Frank, whose diary became famous after her death. Typhus was a terrible problem especially for the children. Of 500 in my barracks, maybe 100 got it, and most of them died. Many others starved to death. When Anne Frank got sick with typhus, I remember telling her she could stay in the barracks.I have a dim memory of Anne Frank speaking about her father. She was a nice, fine person .. There was so little to eat. In my early days there, we were each given one roll of bread for eight days, and we tore it up, piece by piece. One cup of black coffee a day and one cup of soup. And water. That was all. Later there was even less. When I asked the commandant for a little bit of gruel for the children's diet, he would sometimes give me some extra cereal. Anne Frank was among those who asked for cereal, but how could I find cereal for her? It was only for the little children, and only a little bit.

The children died anyway ... In the evening, we tried to help the sickest. In the morning, it was part of my job to tell the soldiers how many had died the night before. Then they would throw the bodies on the fire ...

Anne Frank would say to me, "Irma, I am very sick." I said, "No, you are not sick." She wanted to be reassured that she wasn't. When she slipped into a coma, I took her in my arms. She didn't know that she was dying. She didn't know that she was so sick. You never know. At Bergen-Belsen, you did not have feelings anymore ..."

In Willy Lindwer`s book The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank Rachel van Ameronger-Frankfoorder tells about the death of Anne Frank and her sister in Bergen-Belsen:

"Possibly it was on one of those trips to the latrine that I walked past the bodies of the Frank sisters, one or both - I don't know. At the time, I assumed that the bodies of the Frank girls had also been put down in front of the barracks. And then the heaps would be cleared away. A huge hole would be dug and they were thrown into it ..."

Bodies buried at Bergen-Belsen, April, 1945.

After the war, when it was clear Anne had not survived, the diary was returned to Otto Frank, and he was persuaded to publish it. Fifty years later, it is still an international bestseller. Millions of copies have been sold, and Anne Frank’s name is known around the world. The narrow canal side house where she hid is a museum that is visited by more than 600,000 people a year.

With the profits from the sale of the diaries, Otto Frank set up a charitable foundation, which helped pay for the medical expenses of Christians who had helped Jews during the war. As long as he was alive, Otto Frank ran the foundation, and sought to control his daughters’ image.

Otto Frank, in his last will, gave the original diary to the state of Holland to the War Documentation Center in Amsterdam. They keep it there in a big safe, and they turn the pages every three months to preserve it there ...

A few years ago a Dutch newspaper Het Parool published newfound excerpts of Anne Frank's diary that include bitter observations about her parents' near-loveless marriage. In a front-page article, the Amsterdam daily printed the text from three of the five missing pages which have stirred up controversy in the Netherlands.

Though she never lived to see her 16th birthday, Anne Frank's innermost thoughts scribbled on scraps of paper challenge us, and shame us, a full fifty years after her death. Her life serves as eulogy to the millions of children who perished in World War II.

She did not leave her legacy as an ode to the past - but as a beacon of hope to the future ...