The Anne Frank Fonds Basel

Legacy, Mission, and Responsibility

“We should not teach history lessons but rather teach the lessons of history.”
— Otto Frank

When Otto Frank founded the Anne Frank Fonds (AFF) in Basel in January 1963, it was a decision rooted in a deep sense of civic responsibility. He had lost his two daughters, Margot and Anne, and his wife, Edith, in the Shoah. He was the only survivor of the eight people in hiding. As the current AFF president John Goldsmith once put it, ”he was driven not by revenge or resignation, but by a deep sense of civic responsibility".

Otto Frank must have felt that the rupture in civilization caused by the Holocaust would not be a closed chapter of history. That racism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and conspiracy theories would not end with the liberation of the camps but would constantly take on new forms. He chose his daughter’s diary as his response — not as a museum piece, but as a living instrument of enlightenment.

The AFF is the only organisation founded by Otto Frank himself. He designated the Fund as his sole heir and legal successor — with the clear intention of consolidating his family’s entire legacy into a single, reliable institution. As such, the AFF manages the copyright to the Diary of Anne Frank and is committed to protecting Anne Frank’s work and integrity. It is independent of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. The AFF is a charitable organisation and subject to supervision by the Swiss Federal authorities. It is legally and organisationally independent of other organisations operating under the name Anne Frank.

Board of Trustees
The four members of the board are honorary and receive no financial remuneration This approach reflects the spirit of Otto Frank; his family’s legacy is not a commercial enterprise, but a commitment.

The family’s last living witness
After Otto Frank’s death in 1980, the family continued his legacy. Buddy Elias, born in Frankfurt in 1925 and raised in Basel, a cousin of Anne Frank, became a board member in 1986 and president of AFF in 1996. He was Anne Frank’s last living relative.

Like his uncle Otto, Buddy Elias saw the diary not as a relic, but as an instrument for peace, dialogue, and education against hatred. He played a key role in the publication and editorial adaptation of the diary and, until his death in March 2015, was committed to using the diary as an educational tool against antisemitism and discrimination. On his initiative, the Anne Frank Centre in Frankfurt was established in 2012 — a collaborative project with the Jewish Museum Frankfurt, in which family documents and objects were permanently brought together in the Franks’ hometown.

John Goldsmith was elected AFF president in 2015. In the interim period the AFF has confronted the challenges of an era in which antisemitism, discrimination, and Holocaust denial remain prevalent. When a research group claimed in 2022 to have identified the Frank family’s betrayer, Goldsmith voiced sharp criticism — the project was commercially motivated, and this fundamentally contradicts the Foundation’s core principle.
For the board, the Diary of Anne Frank is a manifesto for a society that seeks to be built on the basis of “never again”— and remains the Fund’s central credo even in an age of social media, conspiracy theories, and rising populism.

AFF uses the proceeds from the granting of rights and licenses for charitable purposes and for educational initiatives worldwide. It supports, in particular, projects in the areas of education against racism, antisemitism, discrimination, prejudice, and violence, as well as projects aimed at strengthening human rights, particularly the rights of women and children. All proceeds from the worldwide publication of the definitive edition of Anne Frank’s diaries are used to support charitable initiatives promoting peace and dialogue. For over 60 years, the Fund has supported hundreds of projects on every continent in this way.

Children’s Rights at the core
One of the clearest signs of how seriously the AFF takes Otto Frank’s legacy is its consistent commitment to children’s rights — and this commitment does not end with projects and partnerships but extends to universities.

Since 2013, the Fund has maintained a long-term partnership with UNICEF Switzerland. The joint core program “Children Have Rights” directly links reading the Diary to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In addition, the Anne Frank Fonds, together with UNICEF, has initiated a global programme on birth registration and has consistently advanced it over several funding periods. The results are impressive: the global birth registration rate has risen significantly in recent years; over 500 million children under the age of five are now registered — a progress to which the programme has contributed substantially. However, around 150 million children worldwide remain invisible to government systems, without access to health care, education, and legal protection. The programme will therefore be continued and further developed for the period 2026–2028, with a special focus on marginalised groups: refugees, stateless persons, and migrant children.

Another particularly significant milestone is the establishment of the Chair in Child and Youth Rights at the renowned Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The AFF established this chair in collaboration with another Basel-based foundation and provides its funding.
Early on, the AFF linked the topic of children’s rights to the diary. Since then, these have been integrated into the diaries as a dedicated section and have often become part of school curricula. Closely linked to this work is the partnership with UNESCO. In 2009, the diary was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register — a recognition of its status as an irreplaceable cultural document of humanity. In December 2021, UNESCO, together with the Anne Frank Fonds Basel, launched the Holocaust education program “Dear Kitty” at the organisation’s headquarters in Paris.

The program is based on the animated film “Where is Anne Frank” by Israeli director Ari Folman, produced by the AFF. The film recounts the fate of those in hiding in the Amsterdam Secret Annexe and the situation of today’s refugees in Europe — from the perspective of Kitty, Anne Frank’s imaginary friend. The accompanying educational materials, developed by the Anne Frank Fonds in partnership with UNESCO, guide students worldwide through the history of the Holocaust, the origins of antisemitism, the issue of asylum, and universal human rights. Kitty is not merely a film character — she serves as a bridge between yesterday and today, between a diary written in hiding and classrooms around the world.

Projects worldwide
The AFF is involved in a broad network of concrete projects around the globe. The following is a selection of the large number of ongoing international projects :

Muslim-Arab children, and an interfaith peace kindergarten in the heart of Jerusalem, located in the YMCA building, which is attended jointly by Jewish, Arab, and Christian children. A children’s village, originally founded in 1951 for children who had escaped the Holocaust, is now a home for socially disadvantaged and traumatized children and adolescents. Projects in Romania and India, for example, offer children and adolescents prospects for the future and aim to prevent them from falling into the trap of life on the streets.

Added to this is a long-standing collaboration with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem: Since 1987, the Anne Frank Fonds, together with Yad Vashem, has supported needy “Righteous Among the Nations”— those non-Jewish people who risked their lives during World War II to save Jews selflessly and without financial reward.

In summary, revenues from licensing and book sales are donated worldwide to charity, education and academic work with a focus on children and women as well as partner organisations. Last but by no means least, the AFF has supported the work of the Anne Frank Trust in London and maintains a partnership with it. Its late co-founder, Eva Schloss, was the daughter of Otto Frank’s second wife Fritzi who lived with Otto Frank in Basel and is commemorated with him locally in the Birsfelden cemetery.

In conclusion, all of this comprises a unique, consistent conviction: that Anne Frank’s story is not a footnote of history, but an ongoing process. In 1963, Otto Frank established an institution in Basel that continues to carry out this mission with remarkably little bureaucracy and equally strong conviction.
Basel, 1.6.2026