Anne Frank

Have you ever imagined yourself being attacked because of your race, religion, or the way you look? Well Anne Frank and the other Jews did. Anne Frank was only fourteen years old when her family and herself went into hiding from the Nazis. After going into hiding, the Nazis eventually found them and brought them to the concentration camps, where Anne died at the age of sixteen from an infectious disease called typhus. I personally could not imagine the life this girl was living during the Holocaust. I think Anne Frank is a hero because she had many accomplishments throughout her lifetime, of her braveness, and of her staying hopeful for her family.

Anne Frank led an extremely interesting life. Even though she had died at a very young age, she had the will to accomplish many things. Anne Frank's true full name was Anneliese Marie Frank and she was the second child born to Otto and Edith Frank. Anne's family had been middle class, they were liberal, and they enjoyed being that way. When Anne was about two years old her father, Otto, had moved his family to Amsterdam, Netherlands, closer to where he worked. The family had enjoyed living in this area, they liked the way it had wider streets than where they lived before, and they also became relatively social. By the time of Anne's 13th birthday, World War Two had begun. For Anne's 13th birthday she received a diary, and she named the diary Kitty.

A couple months before Anne's 14th birthday, at 10:00 on Easter Sunday, Anne, her family, and some other families heard the voices of the Nazis. The families all ran to the attic after all the lights were shut off, so the officers did not find them. There was eight people in the attic that night and it stayed that way for the next 25 months. After the long 25 months the Nazi officers had found all eight people and sent them to concentration camps. The Nazi's were all following the lead of dictator, Adolf Hitler. They were really nasty to all the Jews and even the people they considered "undesirable" such as Communists, Gypsies, and also homosexuals. In order to find all the undesirables and Jews, the Nazis conducted a periodic house-to-house search. Some people, in order to stay alive, sided with the life ruining Nazis.

The Concentration Camps were horrifying, if you were sent there you knew your life was heading to an end because once you are in, you never came out. On September 3, 1944 the eight that hid in the attic for 25 months were escorted to the concentration camps, along with thousands of others, by train. They arrived at Auschwitz, the concentration camp, in Poland on September 6, 1944. On that day over half the people who were on the train had died in the gas chambers, including all children under the age of 15. Anne was spared since her 15th birthday was the summer before. In late October, 1944, Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were sent to Bergen-Belson, another concentration camp located in Germany (Van Der Rol).

The whole horrifying adventure at the concentration camps were excruciating. The conditions at these terrible concentration camps were indescribably wretched. The Nazi guards hardly ever gave the prisoners food and there were no medicines available to give to the sick. Several hundred people had died of starvation and illness every day. The guards had treated the Undesirables with beatings for no reason whatsoever. Every day they would select a group of unlucky people to go to their death, the gas chambers. It had to be absolutely terrifying for those prisoners because they never knew when their last day was going to be. Anne Frank and Margot Frank had both died within weeks of each other from the infectious disease called Typhus. By the time the Holocaust had ended, the Germans knew they lost, so before the Russians came to retrieve any prisoner from the concentration camps, the Nazis killed most of the prisoners by burning their bodies. The only survivor of the original eight from the attic was Otto Frank( Van Der Rol).