On 25 June 1947, Anne Frank's diary was first published, going on to become a much-loved bestseller worldwide. In this exclusive archive clip, her father, Otto, tells the BBC about his decision to make her words public. Otto Frank initially couldn't bear to read, let alone publish, his daughter's diary , which was released 57 years ago this week.
In 1976, he travelled to the BBC's Blue Peter studio to explain why he did. "I only learnt to know her really through her diary," Otto Frank confessed to Blue Peter's Lesley Judd, as he showed her the personal writings of his beloved late daughter Anne. Otto had actually given his bright, outgoing daughter an autograph book as a gift for her 13th birthday on 12 June 1942.
But Anne had almost immediately decided to use it as a diary and began to record her innermost thoughts, writing as if she was revealing secrets to a close friend. "I hope I shall be able to confide in you completely, as I have never been able to do to anyone before," Otto read out from Anne's first diary entry on the children's TV programme. "And I hope you will be a great support and comfort to me.
" Otto had fled with his family to Amsterdam in 1933 from Frankfurt, where Anne had been born, following the Nazi Party's success in the German federal elections and Adolf Hitler being appointed Chancellor of the Reich. But the safety the Dutch capital seemed to offer from the looming threat of the Nazis would prove to be only a temporary reprieve for the family. In 1940.
