Google Doodle pays tribute to Holocaust victim Anne Frank

She's one of the most influential, widely read writers of the 20th century. And she never lived to see her book in print or even to see her 16th birthday. We're talking about Anne Frank, a symbol of resilience and lost innocence in the face of the Holocaust. Anne Frank was born in 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, the youngest daughter of a Jewish family. Hitler and his antisemitic Nazi party rose to power in 1933.

It was a blank diary. In it, Anne chronicled her thoughts and feelings, writing about her family and friends and boys, all the kind of things you might expect from a young teenage girl. As Anne began her diary, the situation in occupied Netherlands worsened. Jews were stripped of their rights, forbidden from attending schools, from shopping at most stores and from taking public transportation. They were subject to a curfew and they were being sent to work in camps.

Faced with these increasingly difficult circumstances, the Franks made a daring decision. They would go into hiding. Their hiding place a series of unoccupied rooms above the warehouse of the company where Anne's father, Otto had worked. In early July of 1942, the Franks fled to the secret annex. While leaving acquaintances to think they'd actually fled the country, the family would attempt to wait out the Nazi occupation.


ad helped from a small group of friends who brought them food and supplies and kept their secret. But the Franks and others could never leave the annex. They lived in constant fear of discovery and arrest all this time. For over two years, Anne kept her diary. She wrote with a wit and an awareness well beyond her years.