Anne Frank Begins Diary

Date: June 12, 1942 • Location: Berlin, Germany

On her thirteenth birthday, Anne Frank (pictured) began keeping a diary during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

Annelies Marie Frank was a German-born Jewish diarist and Holocaust victim. She gained worldwide notability posthumously for keeping a diary documenting her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands. In the diary, she regularly described her family's everyday life in their hiding place in a secret annex in Amsterdam from 1942 until their arrest in 1944.