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Annelies Frank
AnneFrank
Historical Figure
Nationality: Germany, later Netherlands, then stateless
Year of Birth: 1929
Year of Death: 1945
Cause of Death: Typhus while in a concentration camp (World War II)
Religion: Judaism
Occupation: Author of Fiction, Author of Non-Fiction, diarist
Parents: Otto and Edith Frank
Relatives: Margot (sister)
Fictional Appearances:
"The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging"
POD: July, 1944
Type of Appearance: Direct POV (as "Anne Berkowitz")
Nationality: United States (naturalized)
Occupation: Screenwriter, Housewife
Spouse: Sheldon Berkowitz
Children: Two unnamed sons
Relatives: Unnamed grandchildren;
Elizabeth (great-granddaughter)

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (12 June 1929 – early March 1945) is one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her wartime diary The Diary of a Young Girl has been the basis for several plays and films. Born in the city of Frankfurt, Germany during the Weimar Republic, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. Born a German national, Frank lost her citizenship in 1941. She gained international fame posthumously after her diary was published. It documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

The Frank family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933, the year the Nazi Party gained control over Germany. By the beginning of 1940, they were trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupation of the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in some concealed rooms in the building where Anne's father worked. After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died of typhus in March 1945.

Anne Frank in "The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging"

Anne Berkowitz, née Frank, was a Jewish woman who had escaped the Holocaust as a teenager.

8thGrade

Anne Berkowitz in 2013

She, her family, and several other Jews hid from the Nazis during the German occupation of the Netherlands for the duration of the war. Their place of refuge, the Secret Annexe, was in a nondescript office building in Amsterdam from 1942 until 1945, when the Allied Forces liberated the Netherlands.

Spending years in the Annexe left the group pale, starving, and generally bitter, as they become intimate with each other's flaws during those years. The fear of discovery, the cramped quarters, the very limited resources, and the possibility of being bombed all exacerbated their situation. She maintained a diary during their ordeal, which she fully intended to publish after the war. Instead, once the war was over and the Netherlands were liberated, Anne simply threw it in the trash. During the summer of 1945, Anne lost her virginity to a Canadian soldier.

After the war, Anne and her family, by mutual consent, moved far away from each other. She moved to the United States and married ad-man Sheldon Berkowitz, who'd served as a gunner on a B-24 Liberator during the war. She wrote minor commercial jingles for her husband's business, although she received no credit. She also did some script-doctoring, although she never had one of her screenplays produced. She and Sheldon had two sons. One of hers sons became a Certified Practicing Accountant (CPA) while the other became an ophthalmologist. They both eventually had families of their own. In 2013, she became a great-grandmother with the birth of Elizabeth. Anne had a framed photograph of Elizabeth on her shelf, and maintained a Facebook account specifically so she could see more pictures of the newborn.

Sheldon died in the 1990s. In 2011, the elderly Anne Berkowitz was too frail to live on her own, and moved to the Hebrew Home for the Aging in the San Fernando Valley. In 2013, she was diagnosed with aoertic stenosis, and was told that she had a year or two left, three at most. That same year, she was interviewed by a group of eighth-graders from Junipero Middle School, a Catholic private school, and rather candidly shared her experiences during the war.  

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