Anne Frank

Anne Frank

Anne's life
Anne Frank was a jewish girl born on the 12th of June in 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany. Her real name was Annelies, but she was called Anne.

The Frank family; Margot, Otto, Anne, Edith

Anne moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, with her family in 1933. She had a mother and a father called Edith and Otto. She also had a 3 year older sister called Margot. The reason why they moved from Germany was because Adolf Hitler became the new leader of Germany. Since Anne and her family were jews, they didn't agree to Hitler's thoughts about them and their religion.

By the time Hitler got the power in Germany (in 1933), the economics was very poor. You can say that the country was depressed, but in an economic way.
This made Anne's parents very worried, and that's also a reason to why they wanted to move away from Germany.

When the family had moved from Germany to the Netherlands they lived in peace and they were safe. Anne and Margot went to school, and the parents worked and took care of the house.
But then, in 1940, Hitler and Germany invaded the Netherlands. Now the Frank family weren't safe anymore.

Hitler made strict rules for the jews. The jews couldn't go outside some parts of the city, they had to live in bad neighborhoods, and they had to buy food and other supplies in certain stores. They also had to wear a symbol of the jewish sign: a "star of David". It became more and more extreme, and Hitler eventually sent the jews to concentration camps.

The star of David

A while before Hitler started the concentration camps, Margot was called to go to a labour camp. Edith and Otto thought this was too much, so they decided to hide from the world, and from Hitler.

Anne and her family hid in the building where her father worked. It wasn't only her family who hid in the small space, it was also the van Pels family. Their names were Hermann and Auguste, and together they had a son called Peter. Fritz Pfeffer also hid along with them.

The bookshelf they used as a door to their hiding place.

Four of Otto's employees helped them to get food and such things. The eight of them were always scared of being discovered in their little place, and they had to be really quiet all the time.
For two years (1942-1944) they all lived in this little place until they got betrayed, but no one knows by whom.

On the 4th of August 1944 the eight people was discovered and sent to different concentration camps. Anne got to be along with both her mother and sister at the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Margot and Anne then got moved to the camp in Bergen-Belsen, where they both died. They both died of typhus in March 1945 (Anne was only 15 years old), only about a month before the Brits liberated the camp.

Both a young and an old Otto Frank. 

Everyone else, except Otto, died too. Hermann got gassed to death at the concentration camp in Auschwitz. The other died at different camps. Most of them was first at the Auschwitz-camp, but then got moved to other camps and died there instead.

Otto got free from the concentration camp in Auschwitz when russian troops liberated the camp. He moved around in Europe, and he also married Elfreide Geiringer, who also was a survivor of the camp in Auschwitz. Otto died year 1980, 91 years old.

One of the helpers, Miep Giers, was the last survivor of the people we associate with Anne Frank. She died on the 11th of January 2010, and she then was 100 years old.

Anne's diary

Anne's diary
While Anne and the 7 other people hid, she got a diary. Or, she got it for her 13th birthday a while before they hid. She wrote down all of her thoughts; about life, about love, about everything.
I've read the book myself, and you really get into her life. If you don't know how the people look or sound like you make it up yourself. Sometimes I forgot it was a real life story and not a made-up story.

When Otto Frank got liberated from the Auschwitz camp he went back to Amsterdam to talk to Miep and Jan Gies (the helpers). He discovered that both Edith, Margot and Anne didn't survive the war, even if his hopes was that they did.
Otto got Anne's diary from Miep and Jan in 1945. He also made Anne's wish about publishing her diary after the war, come true.

The diary of Anne Frank was published in 1947. Otto answered many letters from people who read the book, and it also touched many people. The book got translated into other languages, and it also became a theater and a movie.

The diary has been published in over 50 languages. It's now also made into many different movies, and it's a story famous all over the world.


Concentration camps
The first concentration camp was in Germany in 1933. Hitler sent jews, communists, handicapped people, homosexuals, people with political thoughts that weren't like Hitler's and so on, to the camps- His goal was to make them weak both physically and mentally. Some of the camps were extermination camps, and that's where Hitler made the jews get into shower rooms where they got gassed to death. It was first in 1939 that there were many camps in different parts of Germany. Later, there were camps in for example Poland, too.

He used these camps during the World War II, and over 5 millions of jews died during the extermination. Also, many millions of people from the other groups of people died in the camps.

People in the clothes they got from the concentration camp.

Auschwitz was a concentration camp in Poland (where Anne died), and it's the most famous camp. In the years 1942-1944 about 2 millions of jews got gassed to death.

When the people came to Auschwitz they got divided in groups. First, it was two groups; men and women. Then they split those groups up into who could work and who was too weak to work. The ones who was too weak to work (like sick people, old people, kids etc.) got sent to the gas chambers. The ones who could work got to work during very bad conditions.

In the gas chambers, there could be around 700 people at the same time. When they had died, they got buried in mass graves for jews.
In the Auschwitz camp, there was a wall that they called the "extermination wall". There, a person has to stand all naked facing the wall, and then they got shot in the head.

In the concentration camps, the prisoners couldn't wear their own clothes. The soldiers took the clothes away from them, and instead they got to wear a striped uniform that looked like a pyjamas. The men got to wear trousers, vest, hat and a coat. Women got to wear a dress. The prisoners weren't allowed to wear socks, so they only wore shoes that made them get sores on their feet. The sores could be infected because the conditions on the camps were very poor, and the infections could lead to the dead.
The prisoners got to change their clothes every six weeks. On their clothing there were a number that showed what number the prisoner had, and there were also a triangle that showed what "group of people" the prisoner belonged to. For example, jews had a yellow triangle, homosexuals a pink one and criminals had a green one.

The idea of being at a concentration camp myself make me feel really sad. I don't understand how people could work at the camps and support Hitler. They killed so many innocent people, and I just don't understand. It's crazy, that all of this actually happened.




Sources
- http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank
- http://www.biography.com/people/anne-frank-9300892#synopsis
- http://annefrank.org/en/Anne-Frank/
- http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Franks_dagbok
- http://www.annefrankguide.net/sv-se/bronnenbank.asp?aid=32675
- http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005263
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps
- http://www.ne.se/uppslagsverk/encyklopedi/enkel/koncentrationsl%C3%A4ger
- http://www.ne.se/uppslagsverk/encyklopedi/enkel/f%C3%B6rintelsen
- http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gonvxBXAgNI
- http://www.theholocaustexplained.org/ks3/the-camps/how-were-the-camps-run/uniform-and-clothing/#.VGHa7_SG-aE




Difficult words
labour camp - arbetsläger
liberated - frigjorde
associate - kopplar ihop
extermination camps - förintelseläger
gas chamber - gaskammare
imprisonment - fängelse