Viral Video: Anne Frank Film Finally Online

Last week, the only known filmed images of doomed teenage diarist Anne Frank were posted online.

The short film, from 1941, is part of a whole channel the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam launched on YouTube last week.

The clip of the inspiring Frank has had close to 1.7 million views so far.

Frank, of course, became a heroine worldwide after her death, following publication of her eloquent diary chronicling the years she and her family spent hiding from the Nazis during World War II.

In the 20-second video below, filmed before any of that happened, Frank appears for about nine seconds, peeking from a balcony at a newlywed couple below her.

A year after the film was taken, Frank and her family were living in fear of Nazi persecution, hidden in the attic space above the family business.

She and the others there were later discovered and taken to concentration camps, where she died in 1945, just before the war ended.

The Anne Frank Museum is now located in the building where she hid and wrote the diary–which, as anyone who has gone there can tell you, is a wonderful memorial to her and the many victims of the Nazi regime.

Here’s the video of Frank, and there is much more worth checking out on the channel on YouTube, which is owned by Google (GOOG):