How Anne Frank’s photograph became as recognisable as the Mona Lisa

Anne Frank died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen in late February 1944. Her last days were spent in the sick barracks caring for her sister Margot, who had a high fever and smiled contentedly, her mind already wandering. Anne, too, had been feverish, but ‘friendly and sweet’, according to witnesses. Her last recorded words were: ‘Margot will sleep well, and when she sleeps I won’t need to get up again.’ 

Ruth Franklin’s superb and subtle book pivots around this moment, which is described in a starkly titled central chapter, ‘Corpse’. Half her study tells Anne’s story up to the tragedy of her death. It traces her parents’ backgrounds and characters, her birth in Germany, the family’s flight to the Netherlands, their going into hiding, the writing of the diary, the betrayal and arrest, Anne’s time in Auschwitz and her final days in Bergen-Belsen.

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The second half of the book, which is equally fascinating, examines what happened afterwards, starting with Otto Frank first reading his daughter’s papers, the editing process and publication, and then Anne’s rapid rise to international prominence as the most famous victim of the Holocaust. Franklin looks at depictions of Anne in plays, films and books and at the use and abuse of her name and story for political purposes. There is now a small industry of Anne Frank scholarship, but a good case could be made for this book being the definitive work on the subject. It is highly recommended.

Otto, one of the heroes of the study, was born in Frankfurt in 1889, less than a month after Hitler. His father owned a bank and the family had a box at the opera and a large house where they entertained in style and held costume balls.