THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL

by ANNE FRANK

Edited by Otto H Frank and Mirjam Pressler

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New softcover book, 428 pages. 60th Anniversary Edition published 2012

'Hiding ... where would we hide? ... Margot and I started packing our most important belongings into a satchel. The first thing I stuck in was this diary...'

In July 1942, thirteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation, went into hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years Anne vividly describes in her diary the frustrations of living in such close, confined quarters, and she confides her innermost thoughts, feelings and longings as she grows up.  Her diary ends abruptly when, in August 1944, they were all betrayed.

Sixty years after its first publication, Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl remains the simgle most poignant story to emerge from the Second World War. It has reached millions of young people throughout the world.

About the Author

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Maine in Germany in 1929. She is the author of The Diary of a Young Girl, which tells the remarkable true-story of a young, Jewish girl against the backdrop of the horrors of the Second World War. Adolescent preoccupations and emotions are recorded alongside the growing powers of the Nazis and their imposition of Anti-Jewish Laws to create a compelling, poignant insight into family life under Nazi rule.

Anne Frank moved to Holland with her family when the Nazis became powerful in Germany. The Nazis believed that some races, such as Jews and gypsies did not deserve the right to live and they started to arrest, transport and kill them. Afraid for their lives, Anne and her family went into hiding. During the terrible time in hiding, Anne was growing from a young girl into a woman and she recorded her thoughts and experiences in a diary: the constant fear of discovery, the conflicts with her mother, her emerging sexuality, and her hopes for the future. As the diary progresses, Anne's childish innocence is replaced by premature wisdom and reflection; she not only expresses her concerns with their personal sufferings but also political events unfolding far from their hiding place. The family hid in the Secret Annexe at the back of a warehouse from July 1942, but ultimately the work of their protectors was undermined by the actions of Nazi collaborators and spies. In August 1944, they were discovered and taken to concentration camps. 

Anne died of typhus in 1945, imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen, just a few months before her sixteenth birthday. Her diary, written between 12 June 1942 and 1 August 1944, was found after the war and later published by her father Otto H. Frank, the only surviving member of the family. It has become a bestseller throughout the world and is an extraordinary piece of writing from such a young girl, detailing her emotional transformation from childhood to adolescence and reminding us of the horror of prejudice and persecution

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The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank