The dairy that Anne Frank wrote as a teenager in a cramped Amsterdam attic lives in the hearts of readers across the world. Her story has been a continuing inspiration to many and made her one of the most enduring voices of World War II.

I became connected to her story 50 years ago, when my father asked me to be associate producer of The Diary of Anne Frank, the first American motion picture to deal with the Holocaust. He and I flew to Munich in May 1957 to begin our research. This was my father’s first time in Europe since his service as a lieutenant colonel in charge of a combat motion picture unit photographing the war in Europe. It was a rare opportunity for a son to relive his father’s war.

We rented a car in Munich and drove to the small town of Dachau, where we viewed the remnants of the concentration camp that Hitler established in the 1930s. That camp operated until it was liberated in April 1945 by US Army units that included my father’s. What those troops found at Dachau, and what my father filmed, were scenes of unimaginable horror. That film became a permanent record of what had happened there, making it difficult in later years to deny Hitler’s ravages with any credibility.

We went on to Normandy on the French coast. He said then that he realised that at the time of the Battle of the Bulge, he was within a few hundred kilometers of Anne Frank.

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