Timeline of Humanity

Anne Frank a German girl (1929)

Anne Frank as young girl

Annelies Marie Frank was born on 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt/Main in Germany as the second daughter of the merchant Otto Frank (1889-1980) and his wife Edith (1900-1945). The family lived in an assimilated community of Jews and other citizens. The family and children grew up with Catholic, Protestant and Jewish friends.

The father emigrated to Holland (1933)

Anne Frank's father Otto Heinrich Frank in 1961

After the National Socialists came to power in January 1933, the father realised early that the Nazis would persecute the Jews and emigrated to Amsterdam in September 1933, where he became director of the Dutch branch of the Opekta company. Anne Frank, her mother and her sister Margot (1926-1945) followed her father to Amsterdam in February 1934. She attended the Montessori kindergarten and changed to the primary school in 1935.

The Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands (1940)

Few Dutch people welcomed the Wehrmacht

Edith's mother moved to the Franks in Amsterdam, where she died in January 1942. The Franks learned how ruthlessly the Nazis acted from the reports of Edith's brother Walter Holländer, who was arrested during the "Reich pogrom night" and taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Later he received a special permit to leave the country. Otto Frank, an optimistic person, did not want to realize how badly the National Socialists were doing with the Jews in Germany. But hope turned into fear when the Second World War broke out in September 1939. In 1940 the Wehrmacht marched into the Netherlands and the Jews were harassed by anti-Semitic rules and laws.

Anne Frank started to write her diary (1942)

First edition of the diary in German language

In May the obligation to identify Jews was introduced. In June Anne Frank began to write her diary in Dutch. On 6th of July the Frank family went into hiding, because deportations had already begun and escape from the Netherlands was impossible. The Frank family was hidden and cared for in the back building of their father's shop at Prinsengracht 263. More people joined them until November and so Anne Frank described the political events as well as the daily conflicts and her own crises. On 27th of March 1943 Anne Frank recorded in her diary the beginning deportation of the Jews: "Like a herd of poor, sick and neglected cattle, the poor people are led to their dirty slaughterhouses."

Anne Frank and the family deported to Auschwitz (1944)

Auschwitz-Birkenau

In the summer, Anne Frank began to revise her diary in order to publish it after the war as a book entitled "Het Achterhuis" (The Backhouse). On 1st of August she wrote her last entry and on 4th of August those hiding in the rear building and her helpers Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleimann were arrested. Miep Gies (1909-2010), a helper of the Frank family, found Anne Frank's diary and gaves it to Anne's father Otto after the war. On 3th of September: The eight who had gone into hiding in the rear building were deported to Auschwitz via the Westerbork camp. October/November: Anne and her sister Margot were transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen (1945)

Memorial stone for the victims of the Nazi

6th of January: Edith Frank, Anne's mother, died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

27th of January: The Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Soviet army. Otto Frank survived the horrors of the concentration camp. February/March: Anne and Margot Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

In June 1947 Otto Frank published the diary of Anne Frank under the title: "Het Achterhuis". The diary was translated into many languages.