I first learned about the short life of Anne Frank in school, probably about the time the 1952 English publication of “The Diary of a Young Girl” was released. Still, the movie engraved the story in my consciousness along with a brief schoolboy crush on Millie Perkins who portrayed Frank in the 1959 film.

Many things tore at my heart in Frank’s story: hiding from the Nazis, the betrayal of her family to the police, and her 1945 death from typhus so late in the war that had the Allies liberated Bergen-Belsen a little sooner than April 1945, she would have survived her imprisonment.

Millie Perkins had a long career–up to 2006–but whenever I saw her in a film or TV series episode, I thought of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and my crush on the young actress.

In many ways, this crush led me to read a lot about Frank and to applaud the diary and its publication while mourning her death which happened (between February and March 1945) when I was less than a year old. I saw the Anne Frank House in 1967 when I spent a month in the Netherlands volunteering on a school ship restoration project.

According to Anne Frank House website, “The Anne Frank House was established on 3 May 1957 in cooperation with Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father. We are an independent non-profit organisation that runs a museum in the house where Anne Frank went into hiding and we try to increase awareness of Anne’s life story all over the world.”

Just seeing that building flooded me with a lifetime of emotions about Anne, the story that has followed me for a lifetime.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of contemporary fantasy novels and stories, including “Sarabande.”