Biographies
Anne Frank
About Anne
Born Annelies Marie Frank on 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany, Anne Frank was one of over a million Jewish children who died in the Holocaust.
Before the Secret Annex
Anne grew up in Frankfurt with her sister Margot and parents Otto and Edith. When Hitler seized power in Germany in 1933, the family emigrated to Amsterdam to escape the growing persecution of Jews. Then Germany invaded Holland in May 1940.
During the Secret Annex
Anne was given a diary on her 13th birthday which became her best friend and confidante. When Margot received a notice to go to a forced-labour camp on 5 July 1942, it was decided the family would go in to hiding in the specially prepared Secret Annex - a week earlier than planned.
Anne recorded all her thoughts and feelings in her diary - from arguments with her mother, to falling in love with Peter van Daan and the turmoil this caused. However much Anne hated being hidden away from the outside world, she always had the hope that they would one day be free.
After the Secret Annex
Hope was shattered on 4 August 1944, when the Secret Annex was raided by the security police following a tip-off.
Anne was arrested and transported to Westerbork transit camp. She was then transferred with the others to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then with Margot to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She died of typhus in March 1945, just a few weeks before British troops liberated the camp.
Miep and Bep discovered Anne's diary in the annex and Miep kept it, unread, in the hope that it could be returned to its author. Sadly this never happened and Miep gave the diary to Anne's father Otto.
Ellie Kendrick
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What's Ellie been in?
Ellie has been a member of the National Youth Theatre and appeared in high-profile dramas including Waking the Dead, Lewis and Prime Suspect. After achieving three top grades at A Level, Ellie is currently on a gap year but hopes to go to university in 2009.
Ellie on Anne
"Anne is this fascinating combination of immature teenager and deeply contemplative, inspiring thinker - she had such constant, unfailing hope. There's a real wit and verve that comes across in her diaries in the face of all her hardship, which no reader can help but like."
Something that struck me was how little things have really changed since her lifetime: us girls still have spats with our families, worry if they're pretty or not and become somewhat dangerously fixated upon boys."
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