The Power of One Girl's Story

The Diary of Anne Frank is, without a doubt, among the most widely-read and influential books in contemporary history. The book ushered in a new wave of Holocaust awareness, and serves as the first exposure to the Holocaust for many, especially young students. As Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal once commented, "People cannot identify with mountains of bodies, but they can with the plight of one 14-year-old child."

The Anne Frank House launched the Official Anne Frank Channel on YouTube last week, expanding its already-impressive online educational resources with new visual resources. The feature video on the channel shows the only-known film footage of Anne, shot in the summer of 1941, just under a year before the Frank family went into hiding. In the short clip, Anne is seen leaning out her window to watch a neighbor's wedding party -- a scene eerily happy and commonplace, given the dramatic turn of events that would come shortly thereafter.

As a testament to the power of her posthumously-published account of her life in hiding, at the time of this writing, the video has been viewed over 1.5 million times since being posted online.

Other videos on the channel include interviews with Anne's father Otto, the only member of the Frank family to survive the Holocaust, Miep Gies, who helped hide the family, and former South African President Nelson Mandela, who read the diary while in prison.