(Imitating Franklin Delano Roosevelt) We have nothing to fear but fear itself!

(Imitating Bette Davis) Fasten your seat-belts.

It's going to be a very bumpy ride.

(Imitating Rocky Balboa) Yo, Adrienne! I'm gonna fight Apollo again, you know what I mean?

(Imitating James Cagney) You dirty rat!

(Imitating Winston Churchill) We shall never surrender!

(Imitating Joan Rivers), Uho! Can we talk?

(Imitating Clark Gable) Frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn.

(Imitating Rodney Dangerfield) I get no respect.

Narrator: Slip into the lives of the some of the world's most fascinating people.

Watch A & E's Biography and escape the ordinary.

(Imitating, Marlon Brando) I could've been somebody charming.

[music]

From A& E, this is Biography.

Anne: You've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist

and later on a famous writer.

Man: She became world famous because of her diary,

but she also became world famous because she died in a concentration camp,

because she was Jewish.

Woman: She's so real, and she's so alive,

and I think that pulls you, just like a magnet.

Woman: She was popular with everybody.

She made fun, and she wanted the attention of the boys, yes,

and they liked her.

Woman: I really thought she was a little spoiled, but I don't think she thought so herself.

Man: She was a real 100%-real girl like everybody else,

like all the other girls,

with the exception that she had a great talent for writing.

Man: Nobody was able to touch every part of life,

and all . . . and religion . . . in her book.

Woman: She was a writer, you know

and a writer often finds survival in, in writing.

Anne: I see the world being slowly transformed

into a wilderness.

I hear the approaching thunder

that one day will destroy us too.

In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals.

Perhaps the day will come when I will be able to realize them.

Narrator: The life of Annalise Marie Frank

began on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt Am Main, Germany.

Anne, as they called her, was the second daughter

of Otto and Edith Hollander Frank.

She was a happy baby, doted on by her elder sister, Margo,

and surrounded by family and friends.

She was lucky enough to be unaware of the terrible

political climate outside the boundaries of her grassy backyard.

Her parents were both from prominent families,

and Otto had even been decorated

as a German Officer in World War 1.

But as German as they felt, they were also Jewish,

and in the late 1920's, as Germany suffered

through a devastating economic collapse,

Jewish was an increasingly dangerous thing to be.

[Hitler speaking in German]

When Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Extreme Nationalist Nazi Party.

was elected Chancellor of Germany,

on a platform of racial purity.

Otto Frank decided his daughters might be safer somewhere else.

Otto Frank: We left Germany in 1933,

because I didn't want to educate my children with splinkas.

They were not allowed to see Christian friends anymore.

In Holland, it was different.

Narrator: Holland had been neutral in the last war,

so Amsterdam seemed to be a safe haven.

Otto, an experienced businessman, quickly set up a company there,

selling pectin,

a key ingredient in making homemade jam.

and sent for his family.

One of the first people four-year old Anne met in Amsterdam

was his assistant, Miep Gies.

Miep Gies: It was in the winter. Mr. Frank said to me, my wife,

and my youngest daughter came in the office, and yes, Mrs. Frank with her

with Anne, came in. Anne, dressed in a white fur coat,

a little shy, and then she looked 'round in the office,

type machines, look out the window, and so, it was very nice.

The Franks, moved into a modern housing complex on the Merwedeplein in South Amsterdam

a neighborhood filling up with other Jewish refugees from Germany.

Anne was quick to make friends at her new school.

She was lively and outspoken, and she had a trick

of dislocating her shoulder for a laugh from her classmates.

Woman: You know, Anne was a very special girl.

She, in America, maybe you say, spicy?

Emm, uhmm, girl that knows everything.

My mother would describe her very good.

She would say, "God knows everything. Anne knows everything better."

Narrator: Anne's father indulged her chatter about movie stars, about her throngs of admirers,

but her mother wondered why Anne couldn't behave more like her older sister, Margo.

Margo was, by most accounts, perfect,

and Anne knew that she could never measure up.

Hannah Pick-Goslar: Margo maybe was even more special than Anna. She was a very good looking girl, very obedient and a very good scholar.

Jaqueline Van Maarsen, childhood friend: And Anne was jealous because Margo was always their beautiful girl,

and she was so neat, and so I know that she was jealous because Margo and the Mother were very much together.

Anne was not so easy girl. She was difficult.

Probably her mother told her so.

Narrator: Just after Anne turned 10, her own battles on the homefront

were overshadowed by war.

Hitler's army's were were on the move,

and it was soon apparent that no corner of Europe was safe.

On May 10, 1940, a month before Anne's 11th birthday

Hitler invaded the Netherlands.

Here, as in Germany and the rest of Europe, as special fury would be directed at Jews.

Soon, Jews had to register with the German authorities

and every day, it seemed, had to relinquish more of their rights.

In 1941, Anne and Margo had to switch schools to the Jewish Lyceum.

That, they didn't mind,

but the Germans were making life more and more difficult.

Hannah Pick-Goslar: Everything that was fun in life was forbidden.

To sit in a park or at the bench, there would be written

For Jews and For Dogs - Forbidden.

Jaqueline Van Maarsen: We couldn't go to the park

we couldn't go to the swimming pool,

we couldn't go the theatre.

Narrator: Despite the suffocating restrictions,

Otto Frank, whom Anne thought the most adorable father in the world,

never failed to find some bright spots in all the gloom.

Hannah PIck-Goslar: Mr. Frank really was a very, very nice man.

He was wonderful. He was always optimistic.

Also later, when the war started, my father always said everything will be bad,

and the Germans will win the war,

and then Mr. Frank came in and, "Everything will be OK,"

and, "The Americans will help," and,"No, don't speak like this."

Narrator: But beneath his optimism,

Otto Frank was laying plans, in case everything was not okay.

One morning, in 1942, he asked his assistant, Miep Gies,

to speak to him privately.

Miep Gies: Upon the morning, he asked me to come in his office,

and said, "I have to speak with you something."

My, uh, wife and my children, we want to go in, uh, in hiding,

and I listened to him.

Are you willing to, uh, care for us with food and other things?

and I said, I would, yes, of course!

It was very dangerous, yes, I know, but it was my choice.

Otto Frank: The people I worked with were really friends, and when the time came, that we had to try to hide,

I first spoke to Mr. Coopers, whom I knew already, for many, many, years, as a very straight, real, good Dutch man,

and Coopers immediately said, "Well, the best thing would be we would hide here in our office building."

After Coopers, I talked with Miep. Miep, I knew very, very well too.

She agreed, and then we talked to Mr. Kraler. He agreed, and then we talked to Ellie.

So, the four of them all were prepared to help us in case of hiding.

Narrator: Anne knew nothing of her father's preparations. She had other things on her mind:

in particular, a 16-year-old admirer, Hello Silverberg.

Hello Silverberg: Umm, I kind of, I was attracted to her.

but when people often ask this question about, uh-uh, a 16-year-old boy being interested in a 13-year-old girl and, uh, uh, it happens,

and she was fascinating. She was very articulate, and I wasn't used to that kind of intellect in somebody that young.

Narrator: Anne had a reputation at school for being a bit too articulate.

She was much more interested in flirting than algebra,

and as punishment for being an incorrigible chatterbox,

she had to write essays and poems, defending herself,

which she thoroughly enjoyed,

and she kept right on talking.

Hannah Pick-Goslar: And in that school, we were sitting always together

and we were chatting,

and then one day, they took me out and the next class.

Next morning, who sits next to me again: Anne.

And the teachers let us live.

I think they knew already,

we don't have a lot of time left.

Jacquline Van Maarsen: Can you say it was cozy in that classroom?

Perhaps that's right word? Because we all had the same fate.

We knew that outside, terrible things were happening,

and even the teachers,

we were very close.

Narrator: Very little was certain in occupied Amsterdam,

but at least Anne could count on her adorable father

to keep birthdays sacred.

On June 12, 1942,

the day Anne turned thirteen,

her Father set out a pile of presents for her party.

Anne was most excited about the one she had picked out herself,

a red and white checkered diary.

Van Maarsen: Well, she was, of course, very excited at that party,

that people were coming for each of them for a party,

and with sparkling eyes, she looked at the presents

but she was - her most important present was her diary

and that, I remember that so well.

And afterwards, when everybody had gone,

and we were there together, arranging her presents,

I couldn't find her diary. She already had put it somewhere else.

Narrator: By that time, Anne's favorite present was already hidden in her room

with Anne's inscription already in it.

Anne: I hope I will be able to confide

everything to you, as I have never been able

to confide in anyone.

And I hope you will be a great source

of comfort and support.

Narrator: Within a matter of weeks,

Anne would need that comfort

far more than she knew.

On Sunday, the 5th of July 1942, a few weeks after her 13th birthday,

Anne Frank was sunning herself on her roof

when she heard the doorbell ring down stairs.

She hoped it was a visit from her beau, Hello Silbergerg.

It was not. It was a Nazi order for her sister, Margo,

to be taken the next day to what they called a labor camp

in the east.

It was the moment her family had been dreading.

The next day, Anne's friends came by as usual to her apartment

at 37 Merwedeplein.

Pick-Gosslar: And we were ringing and ringing,

and nobody opens the door,

and at the end, the tenant, Mr. Goudsmit, he opens the door.

And he looked at us as if he had never seen us,

I mean, he knew for nine years.

"What do you want?"

I said, "We want to play with Anne, like always."

And then he said, "What you don't know is the Frank family went to Switzerland."

Van Maarsen: And then we went into the house,

and everything was upside down,

and everything had always been so neat in that house.

I saw Anne's room, and the bed was not made,

and the shoes that she had just received, and she was so proud of,

when she left them, and I thought,

"How is it possible that she left these shoes?"

But, well, she didn't need shoes of course.

Narrator: Though she had left her shoes,

Anne had taken her most important birthday present with her.

The diary was with Anne, and Anne and her family

were in the hiding place Otto Frank had carefully chosen,

his office at 263 Prinsengracht.

From the outside, no one would know they were there.

Once they stepped through the secret door,

they were in a three-story back building

with two living floors and an attic.

These few rooms would be home,