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Rare Anne Frank poem sells for 140,000 euros at auction

November 23, 2016

An eight-line poem penned by teenage Holocaust victim Anne Frank has gone under the hammer in the Netherlands for 140,000 euros, exceeding all presale estimates. Frank wrote the poem shortly before she went into hiding.

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Niederlande Manuskript von Anne Frank vor Versteigerung in Haarlem
Rare Anne Frank poem sold at auctionImage: picture-alliance/dpa/K. Suyk

Anne Frank wrote the book perhaps most closely associated with the Holocaust: her diary. But before she and her family went into hiding from Nazi occupiers in an Amsterdam apartment, she composed an eight-line poem on March 28, 1942.

It was auctioned in Haarlem, the Netherlands, on Wednesday, selling for 140,000 euros (nearly $150,000), surpassing all presale estimates. It had been estimated to fetch 30,000-50,000 euros ($32,000-53,000) ahead of the auction.

Anne Frank
Anne Frank is one of the most well-known victims of the HolocaustImage: Internationales Auschwitz Komitee

Dedicated to Christiane van Maarsen, the sister of Anne's former school friend Jacqueline, the poem contained excerpts from a Dutch book of verse. 

"Jacqueline was an important person for Anne," Maatje Mostart, a spokeswoman for the Anne Frank Foundation, told news agency AP.

Anne and her family went into hiding in July 1942. Betrayed to the Nazis, the Frank family was arrested in August 1944 and deported. Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in spring 1945, just before the end of World War II. She was 15 years old.

The diary Anne Frank kept while in hiding, published by her father after the war, has become a symbol of all Holocaust victims. The book became a global bestseller, selling over 30 million copies in more than 60 languages.

kbm/eg (AP, dpa)

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