Image released of 80-year-old Anne Frank

Published on Sunday 7 June 2009 22:07

THIS is what Anne Frank would have looked like on her 80th birthday had her life not been cut short in the Holocaust.

Anne, who died aged just 15 in a Nazi concentration camp, would have been celebrating her 80th birthday on Friday.

Her family went into hiding in Amsterdam as the persecution of Jews worsened during the Second World War. But after two years they were betrayed and she died of typhus and starvation in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Her diary, which recounts her time in hiding, remains one of the most poignant documents of the war.

One entry reads: "I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to people. I want to go on living even after my own death."

The Anne Frank Trust used age progression technology to create the image of what she might have looked like. Gillian Walnes, executive director of the Anne Frank Trust UK, said she hoped the image would encourage young people to think about what happened – and live their own lives to the full.