Diary
Publications

When, in August 1945, the Red Cross confirmed the death of Anne and Margot Frank, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank his daughter’s diary. Reading it moved him greatly. After allowing himself time to think and to discuss matters with family members and acquaintances, he decided to publish the diary. In autumn 1945, Otto started to copy out Anne’s diaries. He started with Anne’s revised version and added various sections from the first version. While doing so, he also made some changes to the text, omitting particularly harsh comments by Anne about her mother, Edith Frank, and intimate passages written by the young girl. He also deleted hurtful comments about the others in the secret annex. But he accepted Anne’s pseudonyms for the Van Pels family, Fritz Pfeffer and the helpers, while keeping the real names of the Frank family members.

Under the photos it says:
Things are getting more serious, but there’s still a smile left over from the funny bits.
Oh, what a joke.
Whatever next?
 

Nice one, as well.
That’s a funny story.
Hello. “Yes I’m fine¨” (smiling politely.)

© Anne Frank Fonds, Basel

Next to the photo on the left-hand page it says:
I started with Margot’s photograph and finish with my own. This is January 1942. This photograph is horrible, and I look absolutely nothing like it.
 

At the top of the envelope and on the right-hand page it says:
 

On 11 May 1939 I got this marvellous letter from Daddy, it will be a support to me all my life, unless like Margot I leave it lying about somewhere, just as Margot has done at home.
Anne Frank. 28 September 1942

© Anne Frank Fonds, Basel

Comment on the photos on the left-hand page:
That’s how I look in a pram
Gorgeous as well, isn’t it?
Anne.
I must have been watching the clown here.
Anne
18 October 1942. Sunday

Comment on the photo on the right-hand page:
This is a photograph of me as I wish I looked all the time. Then I might still have a chance of getting to Holywood. But at present, I’m afraid, I usually look quite different.
Anne Frank. 18 October 1942
Sunday.
© Anne Frank Fonds, Basel

Otto Frank enlisted the help of the Dutch radio script editor Albert Cauvern who corrected the typescript and suggested changes in terms of language and content.
 

This version of the Diary, edited by Otto Frank and Albert Cauvern, today is known as Version C. It forms the basis of all editions of the Diary available in bookshops until 1991.

Otto Frank sent the Diary text to friends and acquaintances. The Dutch historian and writer Annie Romein was extremely impressed after reading it. She passed the book on to her husband, Jan Romein, who was also a historian, and he then wrote a review under the title Kinderstem (A child’s voice) for the Het Parool newspaper. The article aroused the interest of the Head of Uitgeverij Contact, a publishing house based in Amsterdam.

The publishing house proofread Anne’s text, adapted it to internal specifications, and included several linguistic adaptations. In addition to his own deletions, Otto Frank accepted the deletion of a total of 26 further passages at the editor’s request.

On 25 June 1947, the first edition of the Diary of Anne Frank was published in Dutch under the title Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven van 12 juni 1942 – 1 augustus 1944 (The Secret Annex. Diary notes from 12 June 1942 – 1 August 1944) with a print run of 3000 copies.

Anne’s Diary sold well: from 1947 to 1950, a total of six editions were published. At Otto Frank’s request, the Contact publishing house published the small volume Weet je nog? Verhalen en sprookjes (Do you remember? Stories and fairy tales) with eight stories by Anne Frank, illustrated by Kees Kelfkens.

In the meantime, Otto Frank commissioned the journalist Annelies Schütz to translate the diary into German. She based her translation not on «Het Achterhuis», but instead used Version C, which had been edited by Otto Frank and Albert Cauvem. This is why the first German translation differs from «Het Achterhuis» in some places.
 

Annelies Schütz was not a professional translator. She was unable to convey the youthful vigour of Anne’s language in German. She also attempted to adapt the content of the text to German readers: she changed or deleted passages where Anne made derogatory comments about Germany and the German people to avoid offending German readers. At the same time, she rewrote the text so that the German origins of the Frank family were not evident to readers.
 

In 1950, the Heidelberg publishing house Lambert Schneider published the text with a print run of 4500 copies. Five years later, a paperback edition was published by Fischer-Bücherei. The previously clearly political preface was replaced with a neutral introduction that did not mention the persecution of Jews.

In France, the Diary is published by the Calman-Lévy publishing house in 1950, in a French translation by Tylia Caren and Suzanne Lombard under the title «Le Journal d’Anne Frank.» The American journalist Meyer Levin, working after the war as a correspondent in Europe and reporting on the horrors of the former concentration camps, read the Diary of Anne Frank, contacted Otto Frank, and gave him staunch support in the search for a publishing house in the English-speaking world.
 

The project succeeded, and in 1952, «The Diary of a Young Girl» was published by the Doubleday (USA) and Vallentine, Mitchell & Co. Ltd. (Great Britain) publishing houses. Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady of the United States, had written the preface. The book became a best-seller, not least because of Meyer Levin’s well-placed reviews. Three editions were published in quick succession.

Between 1955 and 1957, a total of 15 editions of the Diary of Anne Frank were published around the world, in the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany, France, USA, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Israel, Italy, Hungary, Finland and Spain. This makes the Diary of Anne Frank one of the first books which use literature as a means of raising public awareness of the Holocaust.
 

The Diary has so far been translated into more than 70 languages and millions of copies have been sold. Since its publication, millions of young people have read the Diary of Anne Frank at school and studied it in lessons..

Time and again, the many amended, abridged, translated versions cause confusion and misunderstandings. For this reason, the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation) decided in the early 1980s to publish a complete edition of the diaries. In 1986, the first critical and annotated edition of the diaries of Anne Frank was published in Dutch. Two years later, the Fischer publishing house in Frankfurt published the critical edition in a German translation by Mirjam Pressler. In 1991, on behalf of the Anne Frank Fonds, Basel, Mirjam Pressler compiles the globally valid reader’s edition, “The Diary of Anne Frank”, Version D. This version has since been published around the world in new translations from the Dutch original.