On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday and, over the next two years, created one of the most well-known works of literature the world has ever seen. Around the 70th anniversary of her death and the end of the World War II, ANNE FRANK: BEYOND THE DIARY sheds light on Anne's life and wartime experience through the incredible first-person story of the stepsister she hardly knew.
ANNE FRANK: BEYOND THE DIARY premieres Saturday, April 18 at 10/9c on
AMERICAN HEROES CHANNEL (AHC).
Eva Schloss and Anne Frank were 11 years old when they met while playing outside their apartment building in Amsterdam. The girls' could not have foreseen that they would one day become stepsisters, but at the time they bonded over their shared experience of being displaced by the Nazis and relocating to the Netherlands.
Their lives mirrored one another throughout the war, from going into hiding with their families to being betrayed by their protectors, captured, and sent to concentration camps. Anne tragically died shortly before the Bergen-Belsen Camp was liberated in March 1945, but her father Otto and Eva's mother Elfriede survived. They both lost their partners and children, with Eva being the only child between them who survived.
They joined hundreds of others who returned to Amsterdam, where Otto and Elfriede began to see more of each other, offering emotional support. They eventually married in 1953 and remained together for 27 years. Otto became a surrogate father to Eva, and she was one of the first people to hear him read extracts from Anne's diary. She witnessed firsthand the publication and dramatization of the Diary of Anne Frank and, in 1989, set up the Anne Frank Trust UK with the aim of challenging prejudice and hatred.
ANNE FRANK: BEYOND THE DIARY features interviews with:
· Eva Schloss, Anne Frank's stepsister and Auschwitz survivor
· Ronald Leopold, executive director of The Anne Frank House
· Gillian Walnes, executive director and co-founder of The Anne Frank Trust UK
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