Anne Frank | Life, Diary, Arrest & More

Deportation and death

On the morning of August 4, 1944, the secret annex was stormed by a group of German uniformed police led by the SS, a paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. They were transported to the Westerbork transit camp. Having been arrested in hiding, they were considered criminals and sent to the Punishment Barracks for hard labor.

On September 3, 1944, the group was deported on the last transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Here, the men were separated from the women and children. This was the last time Otto Frank would see his family. At the camp, they were used as slave labor. Owing to the terrible conditions, Anne Frank developed scabies.

In October or November, Anne and Margot Frank were transported to Bergen-Belson. Edith Frank, who was left behind, died of starvation.

In early 1945, a typhus epidemic spread through the Bergen-Belson camp, killing 17,000 prisoners, including Anne and Margot Frank. The exact dates of Margot's and Anne's deaths were not recorded.

Anne Frank’s life in hiding

Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in July 1942, and they chose a hidden space behind Otto Frank’s office as their hiding spot.

Anne Frank spent 761 days in the Secret Annex. Anne had to share her room with Fritz Pfeffer, a German dentist and Jewish refugee. Living in such close quarters often led to tensions. 

Their day usually began at 6:45am. During the day, they had to stay extremely quiet so people downstairs couldn’t hear them. They walked around in socks, talked in whispers, and waited for the night to be able to flush. Lunch hour was more relaxed, with the workers going home for their meal. At night, after the workers went home, the people in hiding would relax and spread out through the building. When the sun went down, the windows had to be blacked out, and it would be quiet at the Secret Annex again. Sundays were meant for 'scrubbing, sweeping and washing', as Anne describes in her diary.

Otto’s coworkers and friends, including Miep Gies, Johannes Kleiman, Victor Kugler, and Bep Voskuijl, often brought the residents food supplies, along with clothes and news of the outside world. When Anne wasn’t doing chores, she was writing in her diary, studying with her father, or copying passages from books. She also cut out pictures from magazines to stick on her walls and spied on her neighbors at dawn for entertainment.

Anne Frank’s arrest

On August 4, 1944, the people in hiding were arrested by the Gestapo. The Frank family was transported to Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands. From there, they were sent to Auschwitz on September 3, 1944. Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred to Bergen-Belsen in Germany the following month. Anne’s mother, Edith, died in early January, just before the evacuation of Auschwitz. Due to the terrible conditions at Bergen-Belsen, both Anne and Margot contracted typhus. They died in February or March of 1945. Otto Frank, the only survivor of those in hiding, was found hospitalized at Auschwitz when it was liberated by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.

Anne Frank's diary in popular culture

As a story that has become so popular for the strength, hope, and determination it portrays, The Diary of a Young Girl has become a source of inspiration for many filmmakers. 

• A play by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich based on the diary won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955. 
• The Diary of Anne Frank, a 1959 film based on the play by Hackett and Goodrich, earned Shelley Winters an Academy Award for her performance. Winters donated her Oscar to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
• Anne, authorized by the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel, was the first adaptation allowed to quote literal passages from the diary. 
• Alix Sobler's 2014 The Secret Annex imagined the fate of the diary in a world in which Anne Frank survives the Holocaust.
• Anne formed the basis for Tagebuch der Anne Frank, a 2016 German drama film directed by German filmmaker Hans Steinbichler. 
• The 2021 film Where is Anne Frank by Ari Folman, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, focuses on Kitty, who sets out to find Anne Frank by reflecting on the diary's contents.