Anne’s diary

In May 1945 Germany is defeated. The Nazis have lost the war. Hitler has killed
himself. Otto Frank is the only one of the eight people in hiding to have survived
the camps. Hermann van Pels and Edith Frank are killed in Auschwitz. Fritz Pfeffer
dies in Neuengamme concentration camp, Peter van Pels in the Mauthausen camp.
It is not known where Auguste van Pels died.
Of the 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands, 107,000 were deported to the
concentration camps. Of these, only 5,000 have survived. After the war it becomes
clear that of the 11 million Jews in Europe, 6 million have been murdered. This
crime is known as the Holocaust, or the Shoah.
A real book

By June 1945 Otto Frank is back in the Netherlands. The four helpers have also
survived the war. When Otto hears that Anne and Margot have died in Bergen-
Belsen, Miep gives him Anne’s diary papers. In them, Otto Frank reads that Anne
wanted to turn her diary into a real book, and decides to fulfil this wish after her
death. He finds a publisher, and two years later ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ is
published
9. Since we have computers now, very few people keep diaries (or even
write letters!). Have you ever read the diary of one of your ancestors?
Would you
like to? Keep a journal for one week in which you relate all your feelings
as well as your activities; then consider how you would like someone
else to read it.