INSTRUCTIONS: A week after receiving her diary, Anne Frank wrote a short biography of herself. Later, while
editing her diary, she added more details to this description. Underline, circle, or highlight the events in
Anne’s description of her life that relate to the timeline cards.
My father, the most adorable father I’ve ever seen, didn’t marry my mother until he was thirty-six
and she was twenty-five. My sister Margot was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany in 1926. I
was born on 12 June 1929. I lived in Frankfurt until I was four. Because we're Jewish, my father
emigrated to Holland in 1933, when he became the Managing Director of the Dutch Opekta
Company, which manufactures products used in making jam. My mother, Edith Holländer Frank,
went with him to Holland in September, while Margot and I were sent to Aachen to stay with our
grandmother. Margot went to Holland in December, and I followed in February, when I was
plonked down on the table as a birthday present for Margot.
I started right away at the Montessori nursery school. I stayed there until I was six, at which time
I started in the first form [first grade]. In the sixth form my teacher was Mrs. Kuperus, the
headmistress. At the end of the year we were both in tears as we said a heartbreaking farewell,
because I'd been accepted at the Jewish Lyceum, where Margot also went to school.
Our lives were not without anxiety, since our relatives in Germany were suffering under Hitler's
anti-Jewish laws. After the pogroms in 1938 my two uncles (my mother's brothers) fled Germany,
finding safe refuge in North America. My elderly grandmother came to live with us. She was
seventy-three years old at the time.
After May 1940 the good times were few and far between: first there was the war, then the
capitulation and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews.
Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were required to
wear a yellow star; Jews were required to turn in their bicycles; Jews were forbidden to use trams;
Jews were forbidden to ride in cars, even their own; Jews were required to do their shopping
between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m.; Jews were required to frequent only Jewish-owned barbershops and
June 20, 1942 | 1 of 3
