When Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam from Auschwitz in the spring of 1945, he searched in vain for his wife and daughters only to find they had died in the camps. ‘I am 56, alone, life has no meaning left for me,’ he wrote to one of his friends. Then Miep Gies, a former employee who had helped the group hiding in the secret annex, handed him a pile of his daughter’s papers and her diary. Anne Frank’s legacy became his salvation, a reason to carry on.

While working as a researcher on a documentary about Otto Frank, Sandra van Beek spoke to many people who were close to him. She had access to unique material, including interviews with the last witnesses, most of whom have since died. There are no scoops in the book, and no sensationalism, just an original angle and good source material. Van Beek recounts how the diary came into Otto Frank’s possession, and how, after initial hesitation, he translated extracts for his family before considering publication. It was very difficult to get the diary published, it was widely rejected. Van Beek describes the atmosphere in post-war Holland, where there was no interest in ‘war literature’. Thanks to an influential socialist historian, who read the typescript and was deeply impressed, a publisher was finally found.

The route to international translations is also described in detail, as are Otto Frank’s attempts to maintain control over the many adaptations, including those for film and theatre. Otto was determined his daughter’s diary should be an appeal for tolerance and answered an enormous amount of correspondence sent to him by young people over the years; the Anne Frank House owns 30,000 of such letters.