Anne Frank born - Jun 12, 1929

On this day in 1929, Anne Frank was born in Germany. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class. It's a production of I
Heart Radio. Welcome back to This Day in History Class,
where we reveal a new piece of history every day.
Today is June twelfth, nineteen. The day was June twelfth, nineteen.

(00:28):
A Jewish girl named Anna les Marie Frank, better known
as Anne Frank, was born in Frankfurt on Mine, Germany,
to Edith and Otto Frank. Anne Frank is well known
for her story of persecution during the Holocaust, and and
her family went into hiding in nineteen two during the

(00:48):
German occupation of the Netherlands in World War Two. The
family was soon discovered and sent to concentration camps. Anne's father, Otto,
was the only one in the family to survive the Holocaust,
but and Frank had kept a diary during her time
in hiding, which Otto worked hard to get published. The

(01:09):
diary has now been translated into many languages, sold millions
of copies, and has been adapted for other mediums. And
Frank was born into a family of modest wealth and prominence.
Otto was a well to do businessman, but after the
Nazis came to power in Germany and his parents decided
to move to Amsterdam away from so much anti Semitism

(01:34):
and a suffering economy. In Amsterdam, Otto established a company
that dealt in pecton, which is a substance used as
a setting agent in jams and jellies. As father, mother,
and older sister Margot immigrated first, and Anne joined them
in Amsterdam in February of nineteen thirty four, But beginning

(01:56):
in May of nineteen forty, Nazi Germany occupied and Ssterdam.
After Ann and her family had settled into life in Amsterdam,
living in the Netherlands became dangerous as the Nazis began
to persecute Jewish people. Anne was forced to transfer from
a public school to a Jewish school in September of
nineteen forty one. In nineteen forty two, on her thirteenth

(02:19):
birthday and got a plaid diary. But as the Nazis
began to send Jewish people to concentration camps and Marcott
got a letter of saying she needed to report for
work at a labor camp, the Frank family went into hiding.
On July six, They began living in an attic above
Auto's office at Princeton. Krat to sixty three in her

(02:42):
diary and called their hiding spot the secret annex. The
entrance to the hiding spot was behind a movable bookcase.
Some of Otto's friends and colleagues, including meat Peace, smuggled food, clothes, supplies,
and information to the Franks. Not long after the family
began hiding there, they were joined by four Dutch Jewish people.

(03:05):
The space was cramped and Anne was often scared. They
had to stay quiet so the people working below could
not hear them and they could not go outside. Anne
wrote in her diary about the war, her fears, her
daily life, her hopes for the future, and her personal
issues and experiences. She even wrote short stories in the diary.

(03:29):
On August four nine, just three days after Anne wrote
her last diary entry, the Gestapo or German secret State police,
discovered the Franks and the people in hiding with them.
It's not clear how the Gestapo found the hiding place,
but a Gestapo official and two Dutch police officers arrested

(03:51):
the people in hiding and two of the people who
had been helping them. The Frank family was sent to
Westernborg transit camp on August eighth. In early September, the
Franks were put on a train headed to the Auschwitz
Bergnal concentration and extermination camp, and her sister Margot and
her mother Edith were chosen to do heavy forced labor.

(04:15):
Otto went to a camp for men. Hundreds of other
people who were on their train were immediately murdered. In
October and in Margot were transferred to the bergen Belsen
concentration camp in northern Germany, while their mother and father
stayed at Auschwitz. Edith died in Auschwitz in January of

(04:36):
nineteen forty five, just before its evacuation. Otto was found
at Auschwitz when Soviet troops liberated the camp on January.
Contagious diseases were rampant at concentration camps, and Anne and
Margot got typhus while at bergen Belson. They died in

(04:56):
February of nineteen forty five of the infectious disease, weeks
before the camp was liberated. The other people who hid
with the Franks at Princeton Cross to sixty three also
died in the Holocaust. Nazi Germany officially surrendered to the
Allies on May seven, nineteen. Otto soon found out that

(05:19):
his wife and children had died, but friends who searched
the Frank's hiding place after the family was arrested, returned
to Otto papers that the Gestapo had left behind me.
Peace had preserved Ann's diary and gave it to Otto,
and Otto helped turn Ann's writings into a manuscript. Anne's

(05:40):
account of life in hiding during the Holocaust has since
kept the Frank legacy alive. I'm Eve Steffco and hopefully
you know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. But if you want to hear even more history,
you can listen to a new podcast I host called Unpopular.
Unpopular is about people in history who defied conventions of

(06:02):
their time and we're sometimes persecuted for it. You can
listen wherever you listen to this day in history class,
and if you're so inclined, you can follow us at
t D I h C Podcasts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Thanks again and we'll see you tomorrow. For more podcasts

(06:29):
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