The Only Known Footage of Anne Frank

Today, we honor Anne Frank on her birthday—she would have been 97. This brief, flickering clip is the only known film footage of her. Shot in July 1941 during a neighbor's wedding, Anne leans out a window to watch the bride pass. She is only 12 years old here, and two months later, her family would go into hiding. Anne Frank was a Jewish girl from Frankfurt who spent two years hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex in Amsterdam when she was 13. During this time, she kept a diary and wrote about living through the world's darkest era. In August 1944, the annex was raided. She was 15 years old when she died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in early 1945. The camp was liberated just weeks later. Her father, Otto, the only member of the annex to survive, found her diary and published it. Anne’s diary remains one of the most widely read accounts of the Holocaust ever written. At the Simon Wiesenthal Center, we preserve stories like Anne's to educate and inspire future generations to stand against hatred and antisemitism.