Wonder Woman of the Week: Anne Frank

The German-born Anne Frank is perhaps the most discussed Jewish victim of the Holocaust. The young woman's story survived for hundreds of millions of people world-wide to learn about, documenting the girl's life while in hiding before German authorities sent her to a concentration camp in Auschwitz. Little is known about the young woman's final days- with debate over exactly what month she even died in- but the story from her diary kept while in hiding parallels the horrors of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Anneliese Marie Frank was born in Germany, but moved to the Netherlands shortly at four years-old with her Dutch-Jewish family when Nazis took control of Germany. Because of their religion, Anne and her family were stripped of German citizenship. Since they were not Dutch citizens (or officially the citizens of any country), the family quickly became trapped when Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940. When German forces increased prosecution of Jews in the Netherlands in 1942, Frank and her family were forced to go into hiding.

From the time when her family began hiding in hidden compartments in Anne's father's boss' home until Gestapo agents discovered the family, Anne Frank kept a detailed journal both of the fear growing in the country and of the day-to-day lives of herself and her family members while in hiding. In August 1944, German secret police captured Frank's family and transported them to concentration camps in Germany. That autumn, German authorities transferred Anne and her sister from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen where they died (likely of typhus).

Although most of her family died in the Holocaust, Anne Frank's father Otto survived. During German occupation, Otto's secretary had discovered Anne's diary and kept in through the remainder of the war. Otto Frank worked hard to publish his daughter's diary, succeeding in 1947- first in Dutch and later in more than sixty different languages. In 1999, Time magazine listed Anne as one of the greatest heroes of the 20th Century for her hidden heroism to document in secret the fear and torture of her family and her people.