75th anniversary of Anne Frank diary commemorated in Amsterdam

Saturday marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of "Het Achterhuis," or "Tales from the Secret Annex," based on the diary entries of the Jewish girl Anne Frank about her time in hiding during World War II. Anne's father, Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the family, had his daughter's notes published in a novel on June 25, 1947. The Anne Frank Foundation is commemorating the anniversary.

In honor of the anniversary, author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, winner of the International Booker Prize 2020, has written a poem that can be read on the website of the Anne Frank House. There you can also read reactions that Otto Frank received from the very first recipients of the book, such as people who knew his daughters Anne and Margot, the then-Minister of the Arts Gerrit Bolkestein and the then-Princess Juliana. A temporary exhibition about the creation and development of the book can be seen in the Anne Frank House.

Anne wrote the diaries between June 14, 1942 and Aug. 1, 1944, when she was in hiding on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. She died in 1945, along with her sister Margot, from typhoid fever in concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. She was 16 years old. Her father found the diaries after the war and on the advice of friends he had the letters expanded.

Anne came up with the title "Het Achterhuis" herself. She wanted to become a journalist and later a famous writer. "Whether I will ever be able to carry out these grandiose (mad!) tendencies remains to be seen, but I still have subjects up to now," Anne wrote in 1944. In the first edition of "Het Achterhuis," 3,036 copies were made. The book has been published in more than 70 languages ​​and more than 35 million copies have been made over the years, according to the foundation.