Anne Frank

My hero is Anne Frank. She was born in 1929 in Frankfort, Germany. The reason that Anne Frank is my hero is because she has made a big difference in people's lives. Like for example, she couldn’t move around or else people might have heard that there were Jews somewhere in the house. Also, the Franks and the Van Daan’s (another Jewish family in hiding) were crammed in a small room which was called “The Secret Annexe” and couldn’t walk mostly, talk, run, fidget, and all sorts of stuff. As we complain about not getting anything, think about it, Anne had to leave all of her stuff behind when she moved out of her old home because her family didn’t want the German soldiers to be suspicious of what they were doing or know that they were moving out. Also, living n a small room for 25 months with different people would be aggravating.

Anne Frank lived in Germany until Adolf Hitler gained control in 1933. That’s when Otto Frank knew that Germany wasn’t a good place for his family and moved to Amsterdam. By the mid-1930’s, they moved to an apartment at 37 Merwedeplein where Anne and Margot went to school and the family would take a vacation to the beach. Otto Frank thought that Amsterdam would be a safe place until, in May, 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands, and again the Franks were living under Nazi rule. At that time, the Jews age 6 or older were required to wear the Star of David to show that they were Jewish. By 1942, Jews were being arrested for just being Jewish. And at that time, the Franks started preparing to move to the “Secret Annexe.”

They had a place already in Amsterdam in mind which was the annexe in the business that Otto Frank had owned at 263 Prinsengracht. The workers at the office helped the Franks so that they wouldn’t get captured by the Nazis. On July 12, 1942, they celebrated Anne’s 13th birthday. And that’s the day that she got her diary. Also on July 5, 1942, her sister, Margot, got called to go to the work camp. The family left their old house, left everything (except for the diary) to go to the “Secret Annexe.”

After 25 months of hiding, the German soldiers captured the Franks, Van Daans, Dussel, including Krailer and Koophuis and were sent to the concentration camps. They were separated into a boys and girls camp. Later on, Mrs. Van Daan was sent to Berlin, where she died. The Frank girls were still together until they were both sent on a train to a different camp. Their mother would stay behind where she would die later on. After this happened, Margot got very ill and soon died on the way. This was hard on Anne to keep her spirits up. Later she became ill and died 8 weeks before the Holocaust ended.

The reason that Anne Frank is important to me is because when I heard about Anne, she my changed my life just thinking that each moment a German soldier could barge in and take them away each day, night, minute, hour for the 25 months she was in hiding. And also to think about not being picky about everything in our world. But the thing that I have learned most is to love your family everyday, even if they do get on your nerves.