Anne Frank and her family originally lived in Germany. During the early 1930's Hitler came to power, and because the Franks were Jewish and Hitler had decided to purge the German race of alien strains, especially Jews, their lives were in danger and they migrated to Holland.
For a time they lived normal lives. However, in due course, Hitler's party, the Nazi's, occupied Holland. The Jews were forced to migrate again or to go into hiding. The Franks decided on the latter course. They planned to move into the unused annex of Mr. Frank's office building about the middle of July 1942. Early in July, however, Mr. Frank's elder daughter Margot was called up by the Gestapo (Hitler's police) to be sent to Germany for work. He decided to move the family into hiding ten days earlier than planned. At this time Anne was thirteen years old.
Soon the Franks were sharing their hideout with another family, the Van Daans, who had a son, Peter, of about Anne's age. A Mr. Dussel, a dentist and "rather stuffy" as Anne puts it, became another member of the group. Friends on the outside provided clothing, food and books.
For two years the group remained in hiding. But in August 1944 they were discovered by the Gestapo and taken to concentration camps. .
Anne's diary, which she began shortly before she and her family went into hiding, was discovered by family friends among the books in their hideout. It is an amazingly sensitive and vivid picture of life under unusually circumstances, of the eight people who lived together in such close quarters and of her personal thoughts as she spent the years of her adolescence in this strange environment.