Coffee Break with Liz and Kate

The only known footage of Anne Frank has been released by the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam.  The 20 second silent, black and white footage was shot on July 22, 1941.

The young Anne Frank looks out a second-floor window down at a wedding party below.  The wedding occurred on July 22, 1941, months before the Franks fled their apartment and moved into hiding from the Nazis in what became later known as the Secret Annex.  See the video below.  According to the Anne Frank House, the video has been made available to the public through the benevolence of the couple, who recognized the onlooking girl in their wedding video from over 60 years ago must be the young writer.  At the time they were married, the bride lived next door to the Franks on the second floor.

The release of the video has created a stir around the Internet as viewers who have read the diary, seen film adaptations of it, or who simply know the history of the Frank family during the Holocaust, see the young girl move, toss her hair, look about at her neighbors, and glance back into her apartment on film.  The short video image presents a lively girl who is aware of her surroundings and wants to see it all–everything readers of the diary would expect to see in its writer.  The image is a moving reminder of what the Jews suffered during the Holocaust as well as a fitting celebration of Anne Frank and her accomplishments in this, her 80th birthday year.

Anne aspired to become a journalist, writing in her diary on Wednesday, 5 April 1944:

“

I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I know I can write …, but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent …And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine living like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! … I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

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Anne Frank died at the age of 15 from typhus in the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, seven months after her arrest and only two weeks before British and Canadian troops liberated the camp.

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