Anne Frank

The enduring mystery of the Anne Frank story is, who betrayed her to the Nazis? Anne and her family hid for 25 months in a canal-side warehouse in central Amsterdam, where the teenager wrote her thoughts, yearnings and descriptions of life in the cramped annex into notebooks. First published in English in 1952 as "The Diary of a Young Girl" and later as a stage play and film, her story made her a symbol both of the Holocaust and of Dutch bravery.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank Stories Nathan Englander Alfred A. Knopf: 210 pp., $24.95 Give Nathan Englander credit for chutzpah. The title of his new book of short fiction, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank," draws on two iconic antecedents: the young diarist killed at Bergen-Belsen and the Raymond Carver story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. " Each, in its way, informs the collection; each, in its way, helps to set the terms.

She lives on as the powerful voice of a lost generation. But, like most girls her age, Anne Frank also wallowed in the trivialities of adolescence: boys, gossip, stormy standoffs with Mom. "They say she can't stand me. But I don't care, since I don't like her much either," Anne wrote about a classmate on June 15, 1942, shortly before the Frank family went into hiding from the Nazis.

'Masterpiece Classic: The Diary of Anne Frank' Where: KCET When: 9 p.m. Sunday Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

After the Bible, "The Diary of Anne Frank" is the most widely read nonfiction book in the world. Translated into 60 languages, it's been adapted countless times for stage, film and television and used in schools across the country to help children understand the meaning, and horror, of the Holocaust. It is ideally suited for this last task because Anne, apart from being a young Jewish girl forced to go into hiding when the Germans invaded Holland, was a remarkably articulate teenager, fearless about writing precisely what she thought about everything, from her dislike of her mother to her own burgeoning sexuality.

Relatives of Anne Frank will loan a collection of photographs and letters to the Amsterdam museum housing the Jewish teenager's World War II hiding place to mark next week's 60th anniversary of the publication of her diary. The material, which comes from the Anne Frank archive in Basel, Switzerland, and from Anne's cousin, Buddy Elias, includes photos of Anne; her sister, Margot; her mother, Edith; and her father, Otto, that have rarely or never been on public display.

Amsterdam's City Council gave a property owner permission to cut down the chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding. The large 150-year-old tree has been attacked by a fungus and is in danger of falling. The tree is familiar to readers of "The Diary of Anne Frank." It stands in the courtyard of the building where her family hid during the Nazi occupation.

Screenwriter Deborah Moggach was given a strict directive from the BBC for her adaptation of "The Diary of Anne Frank," which airs on "Masterpiece Classic" Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday. "They wanted an Anne for this generation, so young people could empathize with her and feel she was just one of them," says Moggach. "She was a very typical teenager. I wanted her to be a normal girl, so she wasn't sort of distanced by history from young people watching it now." Available in some 60 languages -- it was first published in 1947 -- "The Diary of Anne Frank" is the critically acclaimed, funny, poignant, sad and even optimistic chronicle of Anne Frank, a German-born Jew who spent most of her young life in Amsterdam.

Human rights advocates and state officials dedicated a bronze statue of Holocaust victim Anne Frank as the centerpiece of the Idaho Human Rights Memorial, calling for all who see it to guard and keep the dignity of mankind. The $1.5-million riverside memorial near downtown Boise features reflective ponds, waterfalls and an amphitheater. Idaho, the longtime home of the Aryan Nations and other white separatist groups, has been planning the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial since 1995.

The last time Hannah Pick spoke with her friend Anne Frank, it was through a barbed-wire fence filled with hay to prevent seeing the other side. That was in January 1945, a few months before Pick and the people interned with her in the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen were liberated by Russian soldiers. It was also just a few months before Anne Frank would die in the camp before the liberation.

Screenwriter Deborah Moggach was given a strict directive from the BBC for her adaptation of "The Diary of Anne Frank," which airs on "Masterpiece Classic" Holocaust Remembrance Day on Sunday. "They wanted an Anne for this generation, so young people could empathize with her and feel she was just one of them," says Moggach. "She was a very typical teenager. I wanted her to be a normal girl, so she wasn't sort of distanced by history from young people watching it now." Available in some 60 languages -- it was first published in 1947 -- "The Diary of Anne Frank" is the critically acclaimed, funny, poignant, sad and even optimistic chronicle of Anne Frank, a German-born Jew who spent most of her young life in Amsterdam.

After the Bible, "The Diary of Anne Frank" is the most widely read nonfiction book in the world. Translated into 60 languages, it's been adapted countless times for stage, film and television and used in schools across the country to help children understand the meaning, and horror, of the Holocaust. It is ideally suited for this last task because Anne, apart from being a young Jewish girl forced to go into hiding when the Germans invaded Holland, was a remarkably articulate teenager, fearless about writing precisely what she thought about everything, from her dislike of her mother to her own burgeoning sexuality.

SERIES Dangerous Drives: Take a ride in one of the Army's heavy equipment transport trucks in this new installment (5 and 9 p.m. Speed). Modern Family: Edward Norton and Elizabeth Banks guest star in this repeat episode (8 p.m. ABC). American Idol: The top 12 male semifinalists perform on a new episode of the talent competition (8 p.m. Fox). Faces of America With Henry Louis Gates Jr.: The Harvard professor explores the family histories of actresses Meryl Streep and Eva Longoria Parker and cellist Yo-Yo Ma in this new installment (8 p.m. KCET)

Miep Gies, who played a pivotal role in introducing to the world the poignant diary of the young Anne Frank and in relating the Frank family's failed attempt to hide from the Nazis, has died. She was 100. Gies died Monday after a short illness, according to an announcement on her website. No other details were provided. The scattered papers Gies gathered up after Anne and her family were taken from their hiding place in Amsterdam to concentration camps were later compiled by Anne's father into one of the most widely read nonfiction books of all time.

Last week, a video went up on YouTube that shows the only motion picture images ever taken of Anne Frank. It's just a quick glimpse, a few seconds of film. A newlywed couple leaves an Amsterdam apartment building. People hover on the sidewalk, watching them go. Then the camera pans upward -- and there, gazing down from a balcony, is Anne Frank. The date is July 22, 1941. She's 12 years old. It's a year before she and her family will go into hiding, less than four years before she will die of typhus at Bergen-Belsen in the waning days of World War II. We watch her watching, watch her look back over her shoulder, quick and coltish, as if in response to someone inside.

Awriter's voice is something readers instinctively respond to but don't pay much attention to, unless they also happen to be writers. Voice is what makes Hemingway sound like Hemingway and why, after a few sentences, we can tell the work of Alice Munro from that of Flannery O'Connor. Complicated, mysterious, difficult to define, voice is the result of every major and minor choice an author makes, decisions about point of view, tone, style, diction, vocabulary, which details to include or omit, whether a sentence should end in a period or an exclamation point.

With the discovery of her diaries after World War II and her father's indefatigable effort to get them published, Anne Frank became an especially poignant icon of the Holocaust. The worldwide success of "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" testifies not just to her importance as a symbol of the 20th century's defining catastrophe but to her significance as an expression of hope as well as despair.

The Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam says it will permanently exhibit Frank's diaries and other writings as part of activities commemorating the 80th anniversary of her birth on June 12, 1929. Until now, her writings have been kept by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation; facsimiles have been used in displays at the museum, which encompasses the apartment where she wrote while hiding from the Nazis. Dutch Education Minister Ronald Plasterk said Thursday while overseeing the transfer that it was important for history that the diaries be displayed where they were written.

Anne Frank put a human face on the horrors of the Holocaust, thanks to the gift of an autograph book she received for her 13th birthday on June 12, 1942. It was just a month before her Jewish family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms in her father Otto Frank's office building. Until they were betrayed to the Nazis, arrested and sent to concentration camps in 1944, Anne Frank skillfully wrote, in the red-and-green-plaid cloth book with a small lock, about her life in the attic.