Anne Frank

A Voice in the Darkness

Anne’s Birth

• Annelies Marie Frank

• June 12, 1929 • Frankfurt am Main,

Germany

• annefrank.orgbaby Anne, a day after her

birth

Anne’s Family

• father: Otto Frank

• mother: Edith Frank

• Sister: Margot Frank

• Jewish and German

Otto with Margot and Anne, 1931

Anne’s Diary

• gift for 13th birthday • wrote entries as if

they were letters• wrote short stories• wrote down favorite

quotes in a notebook• dreamed of becoming

a writer or journalist after the war

Anne’s Hiding Place

• the Secret Annex (the back part of the building)

• the building is owned by Otto Frank’s company

• the entrance to the Secret Annex is concealed behind a moveable bookcase

The Diary of Anne Frank

• genre: drama (tragedy)

• main character: Anne Frank

• setting: WWII

Amsterdam, Holland

• antagonist: Adolf Hitler

• actual diary: July 1942-August 1944

(25 months)

Act I

• flashback

--Scene 1 occurs in November 1945

(The war is over.)

--Scene 2 begins in July 1942

(The entire play is a flashback in time.)

The Fates of the Frank Women

• Anne Frank died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in March of 1945.

• Margot Frank died of typhus shortly before her sister Anne at Bergen-Belsen in March of 1945.

• Mrs. Edith Frank died of starvation and exhaustion at Birkenau, the women’s sub-camp of Auschwitz in January of 1945.

The Fate of Mr. Otto Frank

• Mr. Frank was interned at Auschwitz until the Russian Army liberated the camp in January of 1945. He returned to Amsterdam in June of 1945. He died in Switzerland in 1980 at the age of 91.

The Fates of the Van Daans

• Mr. Van Daan (Hermann van Pels) died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz shortly after his arrival in September of 1944.

• Mrs. Van Daan (Auguste van Pels) died at Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1945.

• Peter Van Daan (Peter van Pels) survived the “death march” from Auschwitz to Mauthausen but died in May of 1945, only three days before the camp was liberated.

The Fates of the Others

• Mr. Dussel (Fritz Pfeffer) died at Neuengamme in December of 1944. Mr. Dussel’s wife was a Christian, so she did not have to go into hiding.

• Miep Gies continued to live in Amsterdam until her death in January of 2010 at the age of 100.

• Mr. Kraler (Mr. Kugler) was arrested in 1944 but escaped in 1945. He immigrated to Canada in 1955 and died in Toronto in 1981.

• Jan Gies (Miep’s husband) died in 1993. • www.sparknotes.com