“I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in to anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support,” Anne writes in her first entry on 12 June 1942, perfectly encapsulating the motivations of the adolescent diarist. Otto was the only member of the family to survive the war. Anne died of typhus along with her sister in the Bergen-Belsen camp in March 1945 – 70 years ago this month – shortly before it was liberated by British and Canadian soldiers. Anne’s diary was found by some of Otto’s colleagues who kept it safe in the family’s absence. The eight remained hidden away for two years and one month until, in August 1944, they were discovered and dragged off to concentration camps. They were joined by another Jewish family, Hermann (a colleague of Otto’s) and Auguste van Pels and their son Peter, along with Fritz Pfeffer, the van Pels’ dentist. On 6 July 1942, just a month after Anne Frank received the diary that’s since become so famous, she, her father Otto, her mother Edith, and her older sister Margot went into hiding in a secret annex in Amsterdam. It’s a story so well-known it doesn't need much elaboration.
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