Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany in February or March 1945, during a typhus epidemic, at the age of 15.

What is known

  • Anne Frank was deported from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen in late 1944, where a severe typhus outbreak killed thousands of prisoners, including Anne and her sister Margot.
  • The Dutch authorities long used 31 March 1945 as her official date of death, but researchers now consider it more likely she died in February 1945, though the exact day cannot be determined.

Why the exact date is uncertain

  • Conditions in the camp were chaotic, records were incomplete or lost, and prisoners who knew Anne personally could only later give approximate time frames for her final illness and death.
  • Archival research and survivor testimonies suggest Anne and Margot were already dead by March 1945, a few weeks before British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945.

Brief context of her final months

  • After the secret annex in Amsterdam was discovered in August 1944, Anne and her family were sent first to Auschwitz, and then she and Margot were transferred to Bergen-Belsen in November 1944.
  • In Bergen-Belsen they faced extreme overcrowding, starvation, and disease; witnesses recalled both sisters becoming increasingly weak and ill from typhus before they died within days or weeks of each other.

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