# Anne Frank Annelies Marie Frank (1929–1945) was a German-born Dutch-Jewish diarist who documented her family's two years in hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex in Amsterdam during World War II. Her diary, published posthumously as *[[The Diary of a Young Girl]]*, became one of the most widely read books in history — a searing, intimate record of life under fascist persecution that has been translated into over 70 languages and serves as one of the world's primary entry points for understanding the Holocaust. ## The Diary The Frank family went into hiding on July 6, 1942, in concealed rooms above Otto Frank's business at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam. Anne, who had received a diary for her 13th birthday, used it to document daily life in the annex with remarkable literary skill, psychological insight, and emotional honesty. She wrote about fear, boredom, family conflict, her own adolescent development, and her stubborn, determined belief in human goodness — even as the machinery of genocide operated around her. On August 4, 1944, the annex was raided. Anne was deported to Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus in February or March 1945 — weeks before the camp was liberated. She was 15 years old. Otto Frank, the family's sole survivor, found Anne's diary preserved by family friend Miep Gies and published it in 1947. It has never been out of print. ## The Most Banned Witness Anne Frank's diary holds the extraordinary distinction of being simultaneously one of the most beloved and most banned books in America. It has been challenged, restricted, or removed from school curricula and libraries repeatedly — for being "too depressing," "sexually offensive" (due to Anne's frank discussion of puberty), or "not suitable for the age group." These challenges have intensified in the current wave of school book bans. In 2023, a Texas school district removed an adapted graphic novel version of the diary. The pattern is consistent: the same political movement that claims to fight against "indoctrination" in schools actively works to prevent children from reading a Jewish teenager's firsthand account of fascist persecution. ## Legacy and Relevance to the Right-Wing KB Frank's relevance to the Right Wing KB is direct and urgent: **Holocaust education under attack:** Right-wing curriculum restrictions and "both sides" framing of historical atrocities directly threaten Holocaust education. Some states have passed laws that effectively require "balanced" presentations of the Holocaust — a framework that gives implicit legitimacy to denial. **Book bans:** Her diary is a primary target, and its banning illustrates how censorship campaigns operate: using procedural complaints about "age-appropriateness" to suppress politically inconvenient testimony. **Rising antisemitism:** The far-right ecosystem includes active Holocaust denial and minimization factions. Anne Frank's diary is one of the most powerful counterarguments to denial — which is precisely why it's a target. **The fascism parallel:** As a witness to where authoritarianism leads, Frank's testimony is uncomfortably relevant to democratic backsliding documented elsewhere in this KB. --- ## See Also - [[Writers]]