About This Quiz
She was more than a precocious kid in an attic -- she brought an eloquence and humanity to the suffering of World War II. How much do you know about Anne Frank?Anne was born in 1929, years after the first World War ended, and just as conditions for the second World War were heating up. Thanks to the Nazis, her life was strange ... and short.
Anne was born in Germany. As anti-Jewish sentiments took hold in the country, Anne and her parents fled to the Netherlands. Anne was just four and a half years old when they moved.
The Frank family was Anne, her parents (Otto and Edith) and Anne's older sister, Margot. Margot was three years older than Anne.
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The Nazis blasted their way across Europe and occupied the Netherlands, including Amsterdam. No one was safe, especially people of Jewish ethnicity.
For two tense, long years, the family hid from German soldiers in a futile effort to stay alive. Eventually, the Nazis found the Franks and subjected them to even more terror.
Anne wrote most of her entries as letters to her diary, which she named Kitty. Historians are divided as to whether Kitty was a real person or just a name that Anne pulled out of her own mind.
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Anne often referred to the hiding place as the Secret Annex, a haven in a time of terror. The first edition of her diary was titled, "Het Achterhuis," which means "The Back House."
Anne was very clear that she eventually wanted to publish her diary for public consumption. She got her wish, only she wasn't alive to bask in the acclaim of her detailed and evocative writing.
Otto was separated from his family at Auschwitz but survived long enough to see liberation thanks to Soviet troops. He traveled back to Amsterdam and a friend gave him Anne's diary. His relatives convinced him to submit the book for publication.
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The Nazis sent a deportation notice to Margot in 1942. The family understood that the notice was a death sentence, so they went into hiding. After they were captured, the Nazis used the discarded notice as evidence that the family was breaking the law.
The Franks shared the space with four other people, including a couple who had a teenage son named Peter. Anne and Peter shared kisses, but Anne wasn't sure if she really liked him or if it was just the confinement that created an attraction.
Anne Frank's father worked for a spice company, and there were hidden rooms in the building. It was there that the family, along with four other people, hid from the Nazis, who prowled the city looking for Jews.
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Otto's trusted employees knew that the family was living there in an effort to hide from the Nazis. The Franks entered the secret space using a door concealed behind a bookcase.
Although they struggled with the usual sibling complications, the time in hiding made Anne and Margot much closer. Their bond helped them to initially survive their eventual deportation.
Only four company employees knew that the Franks were hiding in the building. These trusted friends brought food, news and other necessities to keep the Franks alive.
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In 1944, both Anne and her sister wound up at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They didn't die at the hands of the Germans, though -- they most likely were sickened with typhus, a bacterial disease with flu-like symptoms.
Two of the employees were simply questioned. Two others were sent to labor camps, and they both survived their experiences.
Anne spent much of her time pondering and writing about life. She decided that she wanted to be a journalist or a writer … and she wondered if she would live to have the opportunity.
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The Franks applied to emigrate to America in hopes of escaping Nazi horrors. But their Germany ancestry meant that their application was rejected.
Like all teenagers, she was curious about her body and she wrote about it. The passages are curious and child-like and anything but pornographic.
An unidentified tipster gave the Nazis the information they needed to find the Franks. On August 4, 1944, the Germans arrested everyone hiding in the secret living quarters.
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Only one person (Anne's father, Otto) managed to survive the war. He was liberated from a prison camp in January 1945, but didn't know that his family was dead for another half a year.
Anne was both perceptive and eloquent, and her writing revealed an intelligent young woman who had excellent language skills. Had she survived the war, she undoubtedly could have succeeded as a writer or journalist.
Anne's diary was common knowledge among the people in hiding. Anne sometimes recited portions of the diary to amuse the others.
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In 1947, just two years after the end of the war, Anne's diary was published. Since then, the book has sold more than 30 million copies and been translated into more than 65 languages.
The German officer, named Karl Silberbauer, remarked that Otto's daughter was very lovely. Silberhauser later bought a copy of the book hoping that Anne had featured him as one of the main characters. He wasn't even mentioned.
At a concentration camp, the Nazis selected Edith for the gas chamber, but she hid among other prisoners to escape notice. She saved every bit of food for her daughters (from whom she'd been separated) and wound up dying of starvation.
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Otto Frank not only survived the war, but he remarried in 1953 to another concentration camp survivor. He lived until 1980, when he died of lung cancer.
Otto understood that Anne's writing served as an important cultural touchstone for a generation wounded by war. He did his best to carry on her legacy and the memories of the struggles that his family endured.
In April 1945, just a few weeks after Anne died, British troops stormed the camp and liberated the prisoners. If Anne had managed to survive just a little longer, she would have outlasted the Nazis who persecuted her family.
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