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Secret Annex: The Hidden Life That Became a World Testament
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank received a red-checkered diary — and behind a hidden bookcase at 263 Prinsengracht, began writing one of the twentieth century's most important documents. This is the story of the girl, the annex, the betrayal, and the book that has never stopped speaking.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
A thirteen-year-old girl received a birthday gift on June 12, nineteen forty-two. It was a red-checkered diary, small enough to hold in both hands.
To understand where Anne's story begins, you have to understand what Amsterdam had become by the summer of nineteen forty-two. Germany had invaded the Netherlands in nineteen forty.
The moment that forced the family into action arrived in July of nineteen forty-two. Anne's older sister Margot received a summons.
For two years, one month, and one week, the eight people in the Secret Annex held on. Anne turned fourteen there.
Three days later, on August fourth, the Gestapo came. Someone had told them where to look.
In November of nineteen forty-four, Anne and Margot were transferred again, this time to Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany, designated as slave laborers. The conditions at Bergen-Belsen in the final winter of the war were catastrophic.
Otto Frank was liberated from Auschwitz in January of nineteen forty-five. He was the only one of the eight people from the Secret Annex to survive.
There's a line in the diary that carries an enormous amount of weight, given what the reader knows and Anne didn't. She wrote that in spite of everything, she still believed that people were good at heart.
This is where the story begins. Not at the end, not at the camps, but at the birthday, the red-checkered diary, the girl who woke at six in the morning and reached for her pen.
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