This is one of the most famous testimonies of Nazi barbarism. On June 25, 1947, in the aftermath of World War II, The Diary of Anne Frank was published for the first time, in Dutch, at the instigation of her father, Otto Frank. This young German Jew, who dreamed of becoming a writer, kept this diary from June 12, 1942 to August 1, 1944, between the ages of 13 and 15. Three days later, she was arrested and then deported with her family to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
75 years later, Google pays tribute to this book that has become world famous, by displaying a doodle on its home page. It is the artistic director of Doodle herself, Thoka Maer, who took care of the illustration, indicates the search engine. First published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, The Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into over 70 languages around the world.
As the persecutions against the Jews increased, the family of Anne Frank, who moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1934, were forced to hide in July 1942 in rooms hidden behind a bookcase in the building where the father family works. Until the arrest of the family by the Gestapo on August 4, 1944, Anne will transcribe in her diary, which she had received as a birthday present, her daily life.
Seven months after her arrest in August 1944, Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. Her father, Otto Frank, was the only survivor of the family. He recovered his daughter’s diary in June 1945, on his return to Amsterdam, and sought to have it published immediately.
Over the years, this book has become one of the best-selling books in the world and continues to serve as inspiration for several plays and films. Sales exceeded 30 million copies, according to the Anne Frank Foundation. In French, two publishers hold the rights to this world-famous book: Calmann-Lévy, who first published it in 1950, and Le Livre de poche, since 1958.
