Today in History: 1947 The Diary of Anne Frank is published
On 25 June 1947, Anne Frank’s diary was first published, going on to become a much-loved bestseller worldwide. In this exclusive archive clip, her father, Otto, tells the BBC about his decision to make her words public.
Otto Frank initially couldn’t bear to read, let alone publish, his daughter’s diary, which was released 77 years ago this week. In 1976, he travelled to the BBC’s Blue Peter studio to explain why he did. “I only learnt to know her really through her diary,” Otto Frank confessed to Blue Peter’s Lesley Judd, as he showed her the personal writings of his beloved late daughter Anne.
Otto had actually given his bright, outgoing daughter an autograph book as a gift for her 13th birthday on 12 June 1942. But Anne had almost immediately decided to use it as a diary and began to record her innermost thoughts, writing as if she was revealing secrets to a close friend. “I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do to anyone before,” Otto read out from Anne’s first diary entry on the children’s TV programme. “And I hope you will be a great support and comfort to me.”
Anne’s anxiety, aspirations and boredom, along with the routine frustrations of living so tightly cooped up with other people, were all laid out on her diary pages
Otto had fled with his family to Amsterdam in 1933 from Frankfurt, where Anne had been born, following the Nazi Party’s success in the German federal elections and Adolf Hitler being appointed Chancellor of the Reich. But the safety the Dutch capital seemed to offer from the looming threat of the Nazis would prove to be only a temporary reprieve for the family. In 1940, Hitler having now seized power and declared himself Führer, invaded the Netherlands. With German occupation came a wave of antisemitic measures. Jews were prohibited from owning businesses, forced to wear identifying yellow stars and faced curfews.
Otto, like many Jews, had been attempting from 1938 to emigrate to the US, but the lack of an asylum policy, and the lengthy process to acquire a visa, meant that the paperwork couldn’t be completed before the Nazis shut US consular offices in all German-occupied territories in July 1941.
A month after Anne’s birthday in 1942, Otto’s older daughter Margot received a call-up notice to report to a German labour camp. To evade the authorities, the whole family moved into a secret annex Otto had discovered above his business premises in Amsterdam. For the next two years, the Frank family hid in that space, along with another family and a family friend. In the stifling confines of the annexe, everyone living there was forced to remain silent during the day, and were unable to use the toilet until night-time when the office cleared, for fear of being heard. Food and supplies were smuggled in by a small group of trusted helpers.
All this time, Anne kept scribbling her thoughts in her diary in secret. Because of her longing for friends her own age, she invented fictional characters, such as Kitty, to write to. Her anxiety, aspirations and boredom, along with the routine frustrations of living so tightly cooped up with other people, were all laid out on her diary pages.
The last entry is on 1 August 1944. On the morning of 4 August, the Gestapo stormed the hideout and all the occupants were arrested. The reason for their discovery is still disputed.
The Franks were taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where Otto was separated from his wife Edith and daughters Margot and Anne. He would never see them again. All three would perish in the camps. Anne, who along with her sister was eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, died of typhus in March 1945 just weeks before the camp was liberated.
Read more here: ‘I only learnt to know her through her diary’: Anne Frank’s father on how his daughter lived on after her death - BBC Culture
Also on this day:
1483 The House of Lords and Commons declares King Edward V of England as illegitimate based on his parent’s alleged bigamous marriage
1526 Diet of Speyer convenes, resulting in the Edict of Speyer, which temporarily suspends the 1521 Edict of Worms (a Papal ban on Luther’s teachings); allows Lutheranism and other “reforms” to propagate unimpeded throughout Germany
1607 Mentally ill Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II signs the Treaty of Lieben, giving up Austria, Hungary and Moravia
1630 Fork introduced to American dining by Governor Winthrop
1638 A lunar eclipse is the first astronomical event recorded in the American colonies
1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn: US 7th Cavalry under Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer wiped out by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull in what has become famously known as “Custer’s Last Stand”
1929 US President Herbert Hoover authorizes building of Boulder Dam (Hoover Dam)
1950 North Korea invades South Korea, beginning the Korean War
1967 First global satellite television program: “Our World” broadcast features 19 acts representing 19 nations including The Beatles singing “All You Need Is Love”
1977 Roy C. Sullivan of Virginia is struck by lightning for 7th time
1991 Slovenia and Croatia declare independence from Yugoslavia
1997 Progress M-34 Collides with and damages Mir Space Station
2021 New species of ancient human announced after finding of massive fossilized skull - Homo longi “Dragon Man” from North East China
2021 New type of ancient human announced “Nesher Ramla Homo” lived 140,000-120,000 years ago, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals, uncovered in Ramla, Israel
2022 30,000-year-old intact remains of a baby wooly mammoth found frozen in permafrost in Klondike gold fields in the Yukon, Canada
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1964 Johnny Herbert - British race car driver (Le Mans 24 Hours, 1991), television announcer (Sky Sports F1), born in Brentwood, Essex, England
1956 Anthony Bourdain - American-French celebrity chef, author, and TV personality considered one of the most influential chefs in the world (No Reservations, Parts Unknown), born in New York City (d. 2018)
1943 Carly Simon - American Grammy and Academy Award-winning singer-songwriter (“Anticipation”; “You’re So Vain”), born in New York City
1903 Eric Arthur Blair [George Orwell] - British author (Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four), born in Motihari, British India (d. 1950)
1852 Antoni Gaudi - Catalan-Spanish architect (Sagrada Família, Casa Milà, Casa Batlló), born in Reus, Catalonia, Spain (d. 1926)
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2009 Farrah Fawcett - American actress (Charlie’s Angels, The Burning Bed), dies of cancer at 62
1977 Olive Baden-Powell - English founder of the Girl Guides, dies at 88
1968 Anthony Aloysius Saintjohn [Tony] Hancock - English comedian and actor (Hancock’s Half Hour), commits suicide at 44
1876 George Armstrong Custer - United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars, dies at the Battle of Little Bighorn aged 36
1483 Anthony Woodville - 2nd Earl Rivers, English noble and writer (translated Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, possibly 1st book printed in English), beheaded on orders of future Richard III (b. c. 1440)
Holidays on this day
Bourdain Day
Colour TV Day
Day of the Seafarer
Global Beatles Day
Leon Day
Mitch Lane Day
National Catfish Day
National Parchment Cooking Day (Last Wednesday in June)
National Strawberry Parfait Day
School Prayer Banned Anniversary
Statehood Day in Virginia
World Vitiligo Day
The Funnies:
Interesting (not necessarily extinct) animal of the day:
The Chacoan peccary (Catagonus wagneri) is endemic to the Gran Chaco region, a semi-arid lowland, crossing Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina. The focal area of this project, led by ZSL, is the Argentinean sub-region. This zone is considered a conservation priority site, due to the unique diversity of species and the evolutionary processes that occur within its ecosystems. It holds large extensions of continuous forest, with a high diversity of wildlife and several endemic species.
The Chacoan peccary is classified as Endangered by the IUCN Red List and is designated a priority species by ZSL’s EDGE of Existence program (www.edgeofexistence.org). The Gran Chaco region is considered to be one of the last strongholds of Chacoan peccary populations. Despite this, fewer than 1,000 individuals are thought to remain, living in fragmented populations.
The decline in the range and numbers of Chacoan peccaries is thought to be due to a combination of factors: hunting (although the species is protected in Argentina), diseases and habitat destruction (as native vegetation is replaced by grass to provide pasture). Theses threats leave the peccary with reduced amount of food and without shelter from predators.
With very little known at present about the species’ population biology, abundance, ecology and trends, it is difficult to assess the full impact of these threats and make effective conservation decisions. Further information is therefore urgently required to understand the status of the species and how best to implement effective conservation measures on the ground, whilst increasing public awareness of the species and its threats.
Read more: The Chacoan peccary: urgent conservation action to save a species
on the EDGE of Existence - Fondation Ensemble
Quote of the Day:
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
Albert Einstein
Video of the Day:
Happy birthday to Labi Siffre (1945):
and to Tim Finn (1952):
In memory of Michael Jackson (2009):
Comic of the Day:
Credit: #575; In which it’s Finally Time – Wondermark
Inspirobot Always Controversial, Occasionally Inspirational Quote of the Day:
Read @Vikingmichael’s delayed Spark! from yesterday here: https://community.spiceworks.com/t/spark-pro-series-24-june-2025
Don’t forget to leave some spice right here ↓
