( CNN ) -- On Friday , August 4 , 1944 -- a beautiful summer morning , not unlike the one on which I am writing this now -- a car pulled up in front of a spice warehouse at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam . Inside the car were an Austrian Gestapo officer and his Dutch subordinates , who , acting on a tip-off ( whose source has never been identified ) , had come to arrest the eight Jews who had been hiding for two years in an attic above the warehouse . The eight prisoners were taken to a deportation camp , from where they were sent to Auschwitz . Only one of them , Otto Frank , would survive . It is because of one of youngest of those prisoners , Anne -- 15 at the time of her arrest -- that we know the names of the people who endured under those extraordinary circumstances , and who tried heroically to lead normal lives , although , during the daylight hours , they were forbidden to move or make noise . The diary that Anne had received for her 13th birthday , which she had kept up during their time in the `` secret annex , '' and which she had revised during her family 's last few months in hiding , has outlived her by decades . It has become a classic of world literature , translated , reprinted and read throughout the world . She made her final entry in the diary 70 years ago Friday , sounding like a typical soul-searching adolescent . Often , reading Anne Frank 's diary is the way in which young people first learn about the horrors of the Nazi genocide . Just as importantly , young readers understand that these crimes were visited upon a girl much like themselves and their friends -- a girl who was often in conflict with her mother , a girl who kept vowing to be a more patient and forgiving person , a girl who fell in love for the first time . A girl who wanted to be a writer -- and who was one . Though the circumstances of her final years ( she died , at 15 , in Bergen-Belsen ) were so terrible and extreme , her inner life and her voice seem almost shockingly contemporary , astonishingly similar to the voices of the teenagers we know . We can not help but be amazed that an adolescent girl could have written so movingly and intelligently about a subject that continues to overwhelm the adult imagination . Because of this book , we will remember the names , the quirks -- the characters -- of the eight people who inhabited the secret annex and their brave Dutch helpers . We will be able to visualize them long after everyone who witnessed that horrific era is gone . It is because of Anne 's diary that she and her family are among the few we will remember -- the ones we feel we know -- among the millions who suffered and died as she did . All of this should bolster the argument to be made against those who wish to remove some literature from the curriculum that our children study because it is not `` practical , '' not `` useful , '' because literature ( like Anne Frank 's diary ) is a frivolous luxury compared with the more `` necessary '' subjects that today 's young people must master . What could be more `` practical '' than to learn ( from the inside , from the first-person point of view of someone who experienced it ) the history of the world in which we live , the history that has made us who we are -- and to learn that this history happened not to anonymous masses but to individuals much like ourselves and our children . What could be more `` useful '' than to view that era through the mind and eyes -- and in the words -- of a girl who wanted us to know who she was and what happened to her . And what could be more necessary than the story of a girl who wanted to grow up , to become a writer , to lead a full and normal life -- and was prevented from doing so , by the forces of prejudice and hatred , on a beautiful and otherwise ordinary August morning .
Francine Prose : I think the most important thing is to be able to see that there are people who have been hurt by this and can help you understand what happened. Days later , she and family arrested , sent to concentration camp , where she died . Prose says Anne Frank 's diary a direct , relatable window to history for young people . She says teaching book keeps us alive to history , alert to forces of prejudice and hatred .