The Diary of a Young Girl

84 years ago today a thirteen-year-old girl was given an autograph book, bound with red-and-white checked cloth, for her birthday. She decided to use it as a diary and chronicle her life; tragically, only for the next two years. That was Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl, born in Germany, who became an unassuming diarist and Holocaust victim. She documented her life in hiding in Amsterdam, as the Germans occupied the Netherlands. She wrote several times that she would never allow anyone to read her work. However, she later heard a radio broadcast which said the Dutch government wanted to create a public record of Dutch people's oppression under German occupation. She began editing her writing, removing some sections, with a hope of it being a record after the war. The family, still in hiding in August 1944, was discovered, removed, split up, and ended up in various concentration camps. Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February or March 1945. Probably from a typhus…