Anne Frank, the teenager whose famous diary was penned while she and her family hid from the Nazis during World War II, died in a concentration camp in March 1945. She was 15.

Frank was born Annelies Marie Frank on June 12, 1929 in Frankfort am Main, Germany. She and her older sister Margot grew up in a well to do Jewish family.

After Hitler began to treat Jews harshly in Germany, Frank’s father, Otto, decided to move his family to Amsterdam in 1933. In 1940, Hitler invaded the Netherlands, and Dutch Jews began to face the same treatment as their German counterparts.

As the Germans began rounding up Jewish families for deportation to concentration camps, where they were killed by the millions, Otto Frank began preparing his Amsterdam workplace as a hiding place for his family.

Meantime, the Frank girls had to withdraw from their public school and attend an all-Jewish institution. Receiving a diary on her 13th birthday in 1942, Frank began recording details of her life to the diary she called Kitty. A few days before they retreated to their hiding place, Margot Frank was ordered to go to work in a labor camp.

On July 5, 1942, the Frank family and four other people moved into the hiding place above Frank’s business. For several months, the Frank party lived above while workmen went about their tasks below. Good friends of the Franks delivered needed supplies to the dwellers in the attic.

The eight people stayed in the cramped quarters of the attic rooms for over two years. Anne’s diary chronicled the day-to-day life experiences of her family and the others sharing their cramped living area. A precocious child, Anne’s accounts show she was sometimes unhappy in the close environment, but she was also happy at times, looking forward to life after the war.

She was also optimistic about the basic nature of people, stating in one entry “in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Ironically, Anne hoped to become a writer someday so that her work would live on after her death. Little did she know of the impact her diary would eventually make on the world.

Betrayed by Dutch Nazi collaborators in August 1944, the Frank party was removed from the house, separated and taken to different concentration camps. The diary and other personal effects of the Franks were left at the hiding place.

Otto Frank and his wife were taken to Auschwitz. Anne’s mother died in January 1945 while her father, though hospitalized, survived.

Anne and her sister Margo were taken from camp to camp, eventually ending up in Bergen-Belsen. Margo died of typhus in the spring of 1945 with Anne succumbing to the same disease a few days later.

When he returned to Amsterdam after the war, Otto Frank, the only survivor of his family’s ordeal, was given Anne’s diary by a friend who had found it at the hiding place.

Frank allowed the diary to be published in 1947. Since that time, the diary has been translated into more than 50 languages. It is the most widely read account of the Holocaust, and Anne Frank is the most widely known Holocaust victim. A popular Hollywood movie based on the diary was made in the 1950’s.