Mr Bagel Video: Ballad of Anne Frank

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Ballad of Anne Frank

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Ballad of Anne Frank

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (June 12, 1929 -- beginning of March, 1945) was a European Jewish girl (born in Germany, stateless since 1941, but she aimed to be Dutch as she grew up in the Netherlands) who wrote a diary while in hiding with her family and four friends in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

Anne was born in Frankfurt, Germany, but her family moved to Amsterdam in 1933, after the Nazis gained power in Germany. However, she and her family were trapped when the Nazi occupation extended into the Netherlands. As persecutions against the Jewish population increased, the family went into hiding in July 1942 in hidden rooms in her father Otto Frank's office building.

After two years in hiding the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Seven months after her arrest, Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp within days of her sister, Margot Frank. Her father, Otto, the only survivor of the group, returned to Amsterdam after the war ended, to find that her diary had been saved.

Convinced that it was a unique record, he took action to have it published. It was published originally in Dutch under the title Het Achterhuis: Dagboekbrieven van 12 Juni 1942 -- 1 Augustus 1944 (The Backhouse: Diary notes from 12 June 1942 -- 1 August 1944).

The diary, which was given to Anne Frank on her thirteenth birthday, chronicles her life from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944. It was eventually translated from its original Dutch into many languages and became one of the world's most widely read books. There have also been several films, television, theatrical productions, and even an opera based on the diary.

Described as the work of a mature and insightful mind, it provides an intimate examination of daily life under Nazi occupation and in hiding; through her writing, Anne Frank has become one of the most renowned and discussed of Holocaust victims.

Description as appears at YouTube
Sung by Johnny McEvoy