History’s greatest 13-year-old author, Anne Frank, received for her birthday a small autograph book, not long before her family had to go into hiding. The Nazi persecution began in earnest, and the Frank family was forced to relocate into a Achterhuis — a “secret annex,” as the English translation from Dutch has it. In the confined two-story space the Franks were soon joined by another family hoping to wait out the war and avoid the concentration camps. The developments of their two years in hiding, from the point of a view of a teenage girl, were recorded diligently by Anne Frank.

On this day. June 25, in 1947, Anne Franks’ memoirs, entitled The Diary of a Young Girl by her father Otto, were first published in edited form. Names were changed to protect privacy, and passages criticizing the parents were excised. The book quickly sold through all 3,000 copies of the first edition.

An English version followed by the end of 1950, including the passages previously censored by Otto. As in the Netherlands, the book became a bestseller. A play based on the diary won the Pulitzer Prize for 1955, and a 1959 movie earned Shelley Winters, who played Anne, an Academy Award for her performance. Winters donated her Oscar to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.